Retroperitoneal laparoscopic simple nephrectomy

Objective: Nephrectomy was one of the very first urological procedures to be performed by laparoscopy. The objective of this study was to evaluate the results of retroperitoneal laparoscopic simple nephrectomy. Methods: From 1995 to 2002, 88 retroperitoneal laparoscopic simple nephrectomies were performed in 87 patients with a mean age of 45.3 years (range: 18 to 77 years). The intraoperative and postoperative complications, conversion rate, blood loss, operating time and length of hospital stay were studied for each patient. Results: The mean operating time was 114 min (range: 35 to 280 min), mean blood loss was 97.6 ml (range: 0 to 300 ml), there were 3 conversions (3.4%) and the mean length of hospital stay was 4.7 days (range: 2 to 13 days). The main postoperative complications were 2 cases of haematoma and one abscess of the nephrectomy site requiring surgical revision and 3 intraoperative thromboses of arteriovenous fistulas in 3 patients with polycystic kidney disease. Conclusion: Due to its low morbidity, laparoscopic simple nephrectomy has probably become the reference technique for all indications for nephrectomy for benign disease.