University of Iowa Health Care transplant surgeon Ramy El-Diwany, MD, PhD, recently performed the first robotic living donor nephrectomy, paving the way for more living kidney donations in the state. Today, just over 20% of kidney transplants come from living donors.
Nephrectomy is the medical term for the surgical removal of a kidney. Living donors are individuals who offer one of their healthy and type-matched kidneys to a recipient, while a deceased donation occurs after someone passes away.
During the procedure, a surgeon uses a robotic system to remove a healthy kidney from a living donor. Three 1-inch incisions are made in the abdomen, and a camera is placed in one of the incisions so the surgeon can see the work while mobile robotic “arms” controlled by the surgeon are inserted into the other incisions to precisely separate the kidney, blood vessels, and ureter. Once detached, the kidney is removed from the body through a small Pfannenstiel incision (the same kind used in most Cesarean sections). This extraction method results in a lower complication rate than other extraction methods and results in a better cosmetic outcome…