Laparoendoscopic single-site surgery (LESS) for adnexal tumors: one surgeon's initial experience over a one-year...

In this article, we present our initial experience with laparoendoscopic single-site surgery (LESS) for adnexal tumors and report on the safety and feasibility of this technique.

We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of the first 94 consecutive patients who underwent LESS for adnexal tumors at Cheil General Hospital and Women's Healthcare Center, Seoul, Korea between March 2009 and July 2010. Our retrospective chart review was approved by our local Institutional Review Board (IRB). We used a homemade wound retractor and surgical glove as the single-port device. All LESS procedures were performed by a single surgeon.

Of 94 patients, 90 (95.7%) successfully underwent LESS for the treatment of an adnexal tumor. The mean age of the patients was 38.51 ± 11.65 years, and the mean body mass index was 21.22 ± 2.79 kg/m(2). The mean operative time was 50.33 ± 13.26 min, and the mean diameter of the adnexal tumors was 6.26 ± 3.19 cm. The procedures included enucleation of an ovarian cyst (n=56), salpingo-oophorectomy (n=32), and salpingectomy (n=4). Two cases with suspicion for malignancy underwent conversion to laparotomy (2.1%), and frozen sections revealed serous ovarian adenocarcinoma (n=1) and chronic inflammation (n=1). Except for those two cases, the pathologic diagnoses were confirmed as mature cystic teratoma (n=30), endometriosis (n=24), mucinous cystadenoma (n=14), serous cystadenoma (n=14), borderline ovarian tumor (n=4), hydrosalpinx (n=4), serous adenocarcinoma of the salpinx (n=1), and ectopic pregnancy (n=1). Two cases required an additional trocar for adhesiolysis of severe pelvic adhesion. No major intraoperative or postoperative complications occurred.

Our results suggest that LESS is a safe and feasible alternative to conventional laparoscopic surgery for the treatment of adnexal tumors.