Laparoscopic Nephrectomy

Laparoscopic Nephrectomy – A Less Invasive Kidney Removal

A patient’s kidney may need to be removed due to cancer or other factors such as:

• Chronic infection
• Polycystic kidney disease
• Hypertension
• Kidney stones

How is Laparoscopic Nephrectomy Performed?

When a disease requires the removal of a patient’s kidney, our specially-trained urologists perform a laparoscopic nephrectomy under general anesthesia, using three to four tiny incisions for the instruments and a three to five-inch incision to remove the kidney. This replaces open or traditional surgery where the incision is typically 10 inches long and often goes through the muscle of the abdominal and/or chest wall.

Benefits of Laparoscopic Nephrectomy

• Quicker recovery compared to open surgery
• Less pain
• Less blood loss
• Fewer post-operative complications

Recovery Time

Most patients are able to leave the hospital in 1 to 4 days and resume normal activities in 2 to 6 weeks.

Laparoscopic Partial Nephrectomy

For some tumors of the kidney, it is possible and preferable to preserve as much of the normal kidney as possible. Our skilled surgeons remove the tumor and a small amount of surrounding normal tissue to maintain as much function as possible while still minimizing the risk of regrowth of the kidney cancer.