Laparoscopic staging of endometrial cancer using laparosonic instruments: comparison with electrosurgery

To compare perioperative parameters in two groups of women with different laparoscopic operative techniques in surgical staging of endometrial cancer (EC).

Thirty randomly allocated and laparoscopically treated women with EC. Fifteen patients were operated by electrosurgery, 15 patients by laparosonic operative technique. Differences between the two groups were determined by the Wilcoxon rank-sum test. Probability (P) of less than 0.05 was considered significant.

Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Endoscopic Training Center, Baby Friendly Hospital, Kladno, Czech Republic.

Laparoscopy was successfully completed in 29 patients. Laparoscopy-assisted surgical staging of EC was performed based on the tumor grade and the depth of myoinvasion. In both groups, in total 18 and 5 women underwent pelvic lymphadenectomy (PLN) and infra-aortic lymph node sampling (IALS), respectively. Three patients had metastases in pelvic lymph nodes. In the electrosurgical hemostasis and laparosonic group the mean total time required to finish the whole operative procedure were 132.1 and 138.3 min, respectively, with no statistically significant difference (P=0.96). There were no significant differences between the groups in any intraoperative or postoperative follow-up variables, except for the number of excised lymph nodes where the difference between electrosurgery and laparosonic group (12.7 versus 18) was statistically significant (P=0.05). In one patient with intraoperative venous bleeding the laparosonic hemostasis was ineffective (successful procedure rate 93.3%). One patient from the electrosurgery group was converted to laparotomy due to injury to the epigastric vessels. This complication had no connection with the surgical techniques studied.

It is concluded that both operative technique variants in laparoscopy-assisted surgical staging appear to be feasible and effective for patients with EC.