Ablation versus laparoscopic adrenalectomy for the treatment of aldosterone‑producing adenoma: a meta-analysis

To assess the relative clinical efficacy and safety of ablation and laparoscopic adrenalectomy (LA) for the treatment of adrenal aldosterone-producing adenoma (APA).

Pubmed, Embase, and Cochrane Library databases were searched for relevant studies, while the meta-analysis was performed with RevMan v5.3.

After initially identifying 496 potentially relevant studies, five were ultimately included in the final meta-analysis. In total, these studies contained 128 patients that underwent LA and 91 patients that underwent ablation to treat APA. Clinical success rates were comparable between these two groups (OR: 0.55, P = 0.20), whereas the pooled decreases of systolic and diastolic blood pressure were significantly larger in the ablation group (P = 0.01 and 0.002, respectively). Pooled changes in the aldosterone-to-renin ratio (ARR), serum potassium levels, and medication use were similar in both groups (P = 0.62, 0.24, and 0.96, respectively). The average operative duration in the ablation group was somewhat shorter, but the difference was not significant (MD: - 57.99; P = 0.05), whereas the average blood loss and postoperative hospital stay duration of patients in the ablation group were decreased for patients in the ablation group compared to the LA group (P < 0.00001 and 0.00001, respectively). Major complication, minor complication, and hypertension crisis rates were comparable between these groups (P = 0.35, 0.69, and 0.09, respectively).

Ablation offers comparable efficacy to LA when treating patients with APA, but is associated with a reduced operative duration, decreased intraoperative blood loss, and faster postoperative recovery.