Laparoscopic nephrectomy is a minimally invasive procedure that provides significant benefits to the patient, such as reduced analgesic requirements and shorter recovery time. While the popularity of laparoscopy has grown substantially, there are associated risks of injury to the blood vessels and/or viscera during the insertion of the laparoscopic ports. Such injuries can lead to a significant increase in mortality rates. Patients who have had previous abdominal surgery have a higher risk of adhesions; this has been shown to increase the risk of complications from port placement. Consequently, previous abdominal surgery was viewed as a relative contraindication to laparoscopic surgery. However, studies have demonstrated the advantages of laparoscopic surgery over an open radical approach; hence, previous abdominal surgery is no longer viewed as a contraindication. Here, we describe the case of a 62-year-old man who presented with an incidental finding of right renal cell carcinoma (RCC). We performed a radical nephrectomy on this patient who had undergone multiple previous abdominal surgeries. During this procedure, a small bowel injury occurred. Herein, we review the available evidence and describe the risk factors and techniques to avoid injury from laparoscopic port-site placement in patients undergoing nephrectomy with a history of previous abdominal surgery.
Breish et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License CC-BY 4.0., which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Aim
Urodynamic studies (UDS) are physiological measurements of voiding and storage function of the lower urinary tract that are commonly performed in clinical practice to investigate bothersome lower urinary tract symptoms. Despite considerable efforts to improve UDS, standardisation of the practice remains to be challenging. This audit thus, presents a review the current UDS referral process and analysis of the clinical details included on urodynamic requests.
Method
This audit included retrospective data from 112 patients between March and Oct 2020, 98 of which had UDS performed. Patient electronic records, referral forms and clinic letters were all used for data collection.
Results
Data shows that 47% of patients were females with average age of 56 years, range (16-86) years. The reason of UDS was clearly stated in 8 referrals only and the clinical examination findings were clearly mentioned in 31% only. More than three quarters of patients (i.e., 77%) had assessment of post void residual prior to UDS, but half of the proportion had no history of relevant medications. In 98 patients who had UDS done, the main findings showed that 4 patients had normal studies, 3 with dysfunctional voiding, 7 had bladder outflow obstruction, 32 patients were diagnosed with detrusor overactivity, 12 had stress incontinence and 7 showed detrusor underactivity.
Conclusions
Finding of this audit clearly suggest a level of unclarity in the great majority of referrals. Evidently, key history of relevant medication is overlooked in half of the referrals. Improvements to the current pathway to UDS is therefore pivotal.
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