an unprecedented operation at the CHU allows a patient to keep her kidney
The Toulouse University Hospital carried out an unprecedented operation: that of the removal of tumors from a kidney, followed by a self-transplantation. Assisted by a robot, the intervention allowed a 68-year-old patient to save her kidney and resume a normal life.
The operation is unprecedented. At the Toulouse University Hospital, surgeons removed a patient’s kidney in order to remove tumors from her, before putting it back in place.
The intervention was made possible thanks to an innovative robot-assisted surgical technique. It allowed the removal of three tumors “multiple and complex” on a diseased kidney, indicates the CHU on his website. These tumors had resisted an initial treatment by percutaneous thermo-ablation (that is to say by a source of heat through the skin) because of their inaccessibility. The urethra was then damaged. Given the location of these tumors, the surgical team was then forced to remove the kidney from the patient’s body. She then activated the kidney before reimplanting it and repairing the patient’s urethra.
The use of the robot made it possible to carry out an intervention “minimally invasive where conventional surgery would have been cumbersome and risky”specifies the CHU.
This medical feat was achieved by Doctor Nicolas Doumerc and the surgical urology team. It was published in the World Journal of Urology in November 2022.