The purpose is to report the United Kingdom's largest single-centre experience of robotically assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomies (RALP), using the neurovascular structure-adjacent frozen-section (NeuroSAFE) technique.
We describe the utilisation and outcomes of this technique. This is a retrospective study from 2012 to 2019 on 520 patients undergoing NeuroSAFE RALP at our Institution. Our Institution's database was analysed for false-positive frozen-section (FS) margins as confirmed on paraffin histopathological analysis: functional outcomes of potency, continence, and biochemical recurrence (BCR). The median (range) of console time was 145 (90-300) min. In our cohort, positive FS was seen in 30.7% (160/520) of patients, with a confirmatory paraffin analysis in 91.8% of our patients' cohort (147/160). The neurovascular bundles (NVBs) that underwent secondary resection contained tumour in 26.8% (43/160) of the cases. Biochemical recurrence (BCR) was 6.7% (35/520), of which FS was positive in 40% (14/35) of those cases. There were insufficient evidence of a statistical association of urinary incontinence and positive surgical margin rates according to NS or NVB resection. NeuroSAFE enables intraoperative confirmation of the oncologic safety of a NS procedure. Patients with a positive FS on NeuroSAFE can be converted to a negative surgical margin (NSM) by ipsilateral wide resection. This spared 1 in 4 men from positive margins posterolaterally in our series. Limitations are the absence of a matched contemporary cohort of NS RALP without NeuroSAFE in our centre.
Journal of robotic surgery. 2021 Oct 30 [Epub ahead of print]
Jonathan Noël, Neil H Spencer, Siya Lodia, Seiver Karim, Surina Taneja, Darius Moghanchizadeh, Arvind Nayak, Ashwin Tamhankar, Seema Angra, Rajiv Swamy, Samita Agarwal, Ashish Narula, Tim Lane, Jim Adshead, Nikhil Vasdev
Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire Urological Cancer Centre, Department of Urology, Lister Hospital, East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust, Stevenage, UK. ., University of Hertfordshire, Statistical Services and Consultancy Unit, Hatfield, UK., Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire Urological Cancer Centre, Department of Urology, Lister Hospital, East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust, Stevenage, UK., Lister Hospital, East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust, Stevenage, UK.
PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34716876