Devices to Perform Laparo-Endoscopic Single Site Surgery for Urachal Remnants without Additional Ports

Abstract

The laparoscopic management of urachal remnants has gradually become a common practice. Recently, laparoscopic single-site surgery (LESS), a minimally invasive approach that provides excellent cosmetic results, has been adopted in several surgical procedures for treating urachal remnants. However, when suturing the bladder wall or peritoneal defect during LESS it may be difficult to conduct the procedure manually, and such cases require an additional port for suturing. Our strategy, however, employs a knot pusher to perform the suturing without the need for an additional port. We compared and examined the perioperative parameters of the patients with the additional port and one without it (knot-pusher group). For the additional-port and knot-pusher groups, the average operative time, was 146.8 and 161.7 minutes respectively, pneumoperitoneal surgery time was 90.8 and 88.0 minutes, respectively, suturing time for the bladder wall was 577 and 502 seconds, respectively suturing time for peritoneal defect was 758 vs 779 seconds, respectively, and estimated blood loss was 19 and 9.6 ml, respectively ; there being no significant difference between the two groups. We report our knot-pusher method because it can achieve comparable results without compromising the surgical outcome.