The first Russian experience of laparoscopic removal of the transplanted kidney

As a rule, an over-12-months post-operation nonfunctioning kidney transplant is extracted with the help of a subcapsular method developed by Fedorov. It happens because immune reactions create conditions for the kindey to be embedded in scar tissue. This surgical approach accounts for two major complications: hemorrhage during the operation and short after the operation as well as infected hematoma, which is located on the other side of the capsule of the extracted kidney. In order to decrease blood loss, to avoid nephrectomy together with the capsule and to reduce the risk of infection, we have carried out laparoscopic transplantectomy using the extracapsular method. The operation took 245 minutes, while the blood loss during the operation was 350 ml. The patient was discharged from the hospital 10 days after the operation. This method was successfully implemented for the first time in Turkey in 2010 [1], and after a while a case of robotic transplantectomy was reported in 2014 [2]. There has been no data found concerning laparoscopic transplantectomy in the Russian literature on the topic.