Laparoscopic Surgical Treatment of Localized Renal Cell Carcinoma

Laparoscopic surgery has been developed in recent years in urology. Is there a place for laparoscopic surgery in the treatment of kidney cancer?Radical nephrectomy done by laparoscopy seems to be efficient and mimics the open technique. The early results are satisfactory and at least as good as the gold standard. The only unknown issues are the oncological long-term results.Nephron-sparing laparoscopic surgery is feasible as it has been proven in several publications. Nevertheless, some problems have still to be overcome. A long haemostasis and the need for a vascular clamping have to be improve and long-term oncological results are still lacking.Conclusion: Laparoscopic radical nephrectomy will probably become soon a standard. More technical progress has to be made for laparoscopic nephron-sparing surgery which is a more demanding technique before it becomes a standard.