Robotic Donor Nephrectomy: A Practical Guide

Kidney transplantation from a living donor provides the best chance for successful renal replacement therapy. However patient’s safety remains of paramount importance and complications are unacceptable. Laparoscopic donor nephrectomy (LDN) has been proven to have a lower surgical mortality and morbidity as well as a lower blood loss, a shorter hospital stay, and a better cosmetic result compared to the open procedure. This has resulted in LDN being considered the standard in many centers. Robot-Assisted Laparoscopic Donor (RALD) nephrectomy is a new trend developed in the last decade. Robotic assistance is increasingly popular worldwide, because it offers optimal operative conditions to the urological surgeon and a shorter learning curve than the standard laparoscopy.

Robotic Donor Nephrectomy - A Practical Guide is a user friendly manual aimed to give both novice and mature urologists a clear and comprehensive description of robot-assisted laparoscopic donor nephrectomy through a step-by-step approach. Novel techniques such as the Laparo-Endoscopic Single-Site (LESS) surgery are examined and the editors also look at the well established multi-ports techniques using the da Vinci Surgical system.

Robotic Donor Nephrectomy - A Practical Guide will help young urologists gain better understanding of the techniques of robotic-assisted surgery, and support older urologists in ’crossing the border’ towards laparoscopic surgery, particularly for delicate procedures such as the donor nephrectomy.