Urinary and sexual function after total mesorectal excision

The autonomous pelvic nerves are in close contact to the visceral pelvic fascia that surrounds the mesorectum. The concept of total mesorectal excsion (TME) in rectal cancer treatment has led to a substantial improvement of autonomous pelvic nerve preservation. Consecutively, this highly precise and sharp dissection technique under direct vision reduces the problem of accidental bladder denervation from 50-60% with conventional rectal cancer surgery to less than 20% with TME and the problem of postoperative impotence from 70-100% to less than 30%. The learning curve in this technically demanding procedure plays a major role with regard to a satisfying nerve preservation. The laparoscopic approach for TME allows to obtain similarly favorable results with regard to postoperative urogenital function, at least for tumors situated in the middle and upper third of the rectum, compared with open surgery. The present paper describes and depictures in detail the anatomy and the pathophysiology of autonomic pelvic nerves, the surgical technique for nerve preservation and gives a short overview of the results in the literature including own data.