[Surgical experience and results in transperitoneal laparoscopic adrenalectomy]

Laparoscopic adrenalectomy is currently the gold standard in surgical management of adrenal pathology.

To analyze our results after 12 years of experience in this surgery and to compare with the main published series.

we describe retrospectively 100 adrenalectomies performed between 1997-2009. Analyzed variables: age, size, side, preoperative diagnosis, operative time, blood loss, reconversion, hospital stay and histopathologic report. We utilized Fisher test and chi square test to compare categoric data. We utilized t-Student test to compare means from independent groups with normal distribution. We considered statistical significance when p<0.05.

Mean age was 53.1 years (+/-14.4). Mean size was 3,7 cm (+/-2.2). In 51% of cases it was the left side. Mean follow-up was 15 months (+/-11.9). Preoperative diagnosis was: functional mass (44%), pheocromocytome (17%), incedentaloma>4 cm (20%), metastasis (10%) and adrenal carcinoma (5%). Mean operative time was 145.1 min (+/-55.6). Mean hematocrite loss was 6.26 points (+/-3.3). Reconversion rate was 9.6%. 2 cases of prolonged postoperative ileus. 2 patients required transfusion. 1 patient death because of an descompensation of liver cirrhosis. 80% of complications were on right side. Mean hospital stay was 6 days (+/-5.6). In last 30 procedures we realized statistical differences with first group, in terms of operative time (119.1 min vs 171.2 min) and hospital stay (4.1 days vs 6.1) (p<0.05).

Transperitoneal laparoscopic adrenalectomy is a surgical feasible and safe procedure in urological groups with previous laparoscopic experience. Our results are similar with the published series and confirm the efficacy, security and reproducibility of this technique.