There are 3 types of partial nephrectomy: open surgery, laparoscopic surgery, and robot-assisted laparoscopic surgery.
- Open surgery is easy to perform and less expensive, but more invasive and incisive;
- Laparoscopic surgery is less invasive, but encountering complex tumors increases resection and suturing time, leading to prolonged thermal ischemia and compromising recovery of renal function;
- Robotic-assisted laparoscopic surgery takes advantage of its three-dimensional magnified field of view and flexible and accurate mechanical “hands”, thus combining the advantages of open surgery and laparoscopic surgery, and has obvious advantages in dealing with complex tumors, even better than open surgery in terms of fine separation of blood vessels, but is more expensive and requires an experienced team of surgeons. It is also more expensive and requires a team of experienced surgeons to work with each other.
The choice of procedure should take into account the patient’s own situation and the surgeon’s experience.