A world first at the Toulouse University Hospital allows a 68-year-old woman to keep her kidney
By David Saint-Sernin
Published on
It’s a world premiere and it is at Toulouse University Hospital that it took place.
Never performed to date, an innovative robot-assisted surgical technique has enabled a “ex vivo” removal (outside the body) of cancerous tumors on a kidney, followed by kidney self-transplantation with repair of the ureter.
Concretely, the control was extracted from the person’s body in order to perform an ablation of tumors which had not been able to be preserved until then by traditional techniques.
A patient saves her kidney
Thanks to this cutting-edge intervention carried out by Doctor Nicolas Doumerci and the surgical urology team, a 68-year-old patient will keep his kidney and return to a normal life.
6 cancerous tumors
The Toulouse University Hospital says:
“In October 2021, a scanner had found in this patient 6 cancerous tumors, of low aggressiveness, on the left kidney and 4 on the right kidney. She was treated in interventional radiology for percutaneous thermal ablation of both kidneys: ablation of the tumors by an incandescent heat source through the skin”.
Despite this intervention, “for reasons of accessibility”, only three out of six tumors could be taken from the left kidney.
“In addition, given its proximity to one of the tumors, the ureter had been damaged (thermal injury) and a diversion of urine through the skin (nephrostomy) had been necessary”, indicates the Toulouse University Hospital.
Extract the kidney
As the three remaining tumors continued to expand, the surgical team proposed an innovative technique, consisting of extracting the kidney and removing the three tumors hitherto inaccessible on the “back table”, i.e. on a table next to the patient.
The kidney was then reimplanted in the lower abdomen (left iliac fossa), corresponding to the iliac artery and the ureter reimplanted in a healthy area.
Robotic assistance enabled minimally invasive surgery where conventional surgery would have been cumbersome and risky.
A strategy “full of the future”
This exceptional robot-assisted surgery, which made it possible to treat the tumor cells while preserving the kidney, ended a permanent handicap for the patient who would have had to live with a permanent nephrostomy.
“This medical strategy, full of the future, opens up new possibilities in the treatment of multiple and complex lesions of the kingdom”, assures the CHU.
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