Staging pelvic lymphadenectomy for prostate cancer: a comparison of laparoscopic and open techniques

The operative morbidity and convalescence of our initial 30 patients who underwent laparoscopic pelvic lymph node dissections were compared to those of 16 patients who underwent open surgical pelvic lymph node dissections performed at our institution for staging purposes between 1990 and 1992. The average time for laparoscopic pelvic lymph node dissection (199.4 minutes) was nearly twice that of surgical pelvic lymph node dissection (102.4 minutes). However, the blood loss in the former group was significantly less. Oral intake occurred after a mean of 0.63 days in the laparoscopic pelvic lymph node dissection group compared to 2.87 days in the surgical group. Also, laparoscopic pelvic lymph node dissection was superior to surgical pelvic lymph node dissection in terms of average postoperative analgesic use (1.55 versus 47 mg. morphine sulfate), average hospital stay (1.7 versus 5.37 days), average return to normal daily activities (4.94 versus 42.9 days) and interval to full recovery (10.8 versus 65.5 days). However, the incidence of significant complications in the laparoscopic pelvic lymph node dissection group was 13%, with no complications seen in the surgical group. Interestingly, all significant problems in the bilateral laparoscopic pelvic lymph node dissection patients were confined to our initial 12 patients, indicating the steepness of the laparoscopic learning curve.