Outcomes of adrenalectomy performed in regional New South Wales, Australia

Centralization of subspeciality procedures in Australia is difficult due to a vast geographical span and in the appropriate patient group, surgery in regional centres should be considered. Our study reviews the safety of adrenalectomy performed at a low-volume regional centre in regards to length of hospital admission, operative time, complication rate and conversion to open rate.

A retrospective cross-sectional study was performed of consecutive patients undergoing laparoscopic or open adrenalectomy over a nine-year period (2012-2021) at Dubbo Base Hospital, a regional hospital in Western New South Wales, Australia. These operations were all performed by a single Urologist.

Thirteen patients underwent adrenalectomy at our institution over the nine-year period. The mean age was 51.7 years (SD10.1). There were seven women (53.8%) and six men (46.2%). Seven patients were considered low risk, four patients were medium risk and two patients were high risk as per the Charlson Comorbidity Index. All of our patients were overweight, with mean body mass index of 34.6 (SD 6.9). Mean operating time was 133.5 min (SD 36.3) and mean length of stay was 3.8 days (SD 2.2). There was one conversion to open (8.3%). Three patients (23.1%) had complications, of these complications, one was Clavien-Dindo grade II, and one was Clavien-Dindo grade IIIb. There were no mortalities.

Our outcomes demonstrate that adrenalectomy in our low volume regional centre is safe with comparable outcomes of operative time, length of hospital stay and complication rate with other centres.