Approximately 90 percent of kidney and adrenal tumors are treated transperitoneally (within the abdominal space). Ketan Badani, MD, believes a significant percentage of these procedures could be done using a robot-assisted retroperitoneal approach.
“The transperitoneal approach is the one that is most commonly taught, which is why most surgeons feel comfortable using it to perform partial nephrectomy and adrenalectomy,” says Dr. Badani, Professor of Urology and Director of the Kidney Cancer Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “But there are certain cases where it makes sense to access these tumors retroperitoneally because it offers a more minimally invasive approach that reduces the risk of complications for the patient.”