Laparoscopic live donor nephrectomy: Initial experience

Transplanting a kidney graft harvested from a live: donor has been proposed and used to shorten the waiting time of kidney transplant candidates and t o increase the graft pool. Live donor renal transplants have demonstrated b etter results in term of graft survival rates, compared to renal transplant s harvested from brain dead donor. Recently, laparoscopic live donor nephre ctomy has been introduced to reduce the live procurement morbidity. This lo wer morbidity may result in increased acceptance of the donor operation. We initiated a program of laparoscopic live donor nephrectomy in January 1997 and up until June 1998, three cases were successfully performed in our dep artment. The purpose of this paper was to report the first case of this pro gram and its first year of follow-up.