Robotic Kidney Transplant

Kidney transplantation (KT) is regarded as the preferred treatment for patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) due to the higher survival rate and better quality of life by comparison to hemodialysis. Although the open approach remains the gold standard, minimally invasive techniques have been introduced to decrease the morbidity and mortality of open surgery, which could be especially important in immunocompromised and fragile KT patients. Following the first European experience in RAKT, the robotic approach to KT is now followed in a few European centers as an alternative to the open approach in selected patients. To date, 190 RAKTs, 40 of which were performed at Hospital Clinic Barcelona, mainly from living donors (98%), have been performed. Regarding the surgical aspects, their multicenter prospective study confirms that RAKT can be performed by surgeons with extensive experience in robotic and transplant surgery, even in the early stages of their learning curve. They would like to stress that to obtain such results, surgeons were trained in an animal laboratory before starting to perform RAKT on humans.

Program:

Kidney transplantation (KT) is regarded as the preferred treatment for patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) due to the higher survival rate and better quality of life by comparison to hemodialysis. Although the open approach remains the gold standard, minimally invasive techniques have been introduced to decrease the morbidity and mortality of open surgery, which could be especially important in immunocompromised and fragile KT patients. Following the first European experience in RAKT, the robotic approach to KT is now followed in a few European centers as an alternative to the open approach in selected patients. To date, 190 RAKTs, 40 of which were performed at Hospital Clinic Barcelona, mainly from living donors (98%), have been performed. Regarding the surgical aspects, their multicenter prospective study confirms that RAKT can be performed by surgeons with extensive experience in robotic and transplant surgery, even in the early stages of their learning curve. They would like to stress that to obtain such results, surgeons were trained in an animal laboratory before starting to perform RAKT on humans.