Two is Better Than One: New Procedure Saves Your Kidney After Cancer
Note: This release contains a link to a downloadable Television News Package. This package is provided free of charge to broadcast television and web outlets by the Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital Broadcast Network. Stations may use it in its entirety or any portion of the audio or video. Its reuse in syndicated material sold or distributed to television or web outlets is restricted and allowed only with the written permission of Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital. For more information, call Rebecca Kuchar at (313) 325-0269 or Dwight Angell at (313) 876-8709. For technical questions about the video package, call Bill Harder at (248) 444-0254.
DETROIT – More than 30,000 kidney tumors are diagnosed annually in the United States.
Unfortunately, the standard of medical care is to remove the tumor and the kidney, leaving patients with only one kidney.
Now a robot-assisted procedure pioneered at Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital enables more and more patients to keep both kidneys and cure their cancer, sparing kidneys that otherwise would be removed during kidney cancer operations.
“When you save the kidney, you’re preserving kidney function,” says Craig Rogers, M.D., Director of Renal Surgery at Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital, in Michigan. “Saving a kidney has been shown to correlate with better medical outcomes, fewer cardiovascular events, even improved survival with better kidney function.”
He adds: “If it’s technically feasible to save the kidney, then that’s what we should be doing.”
Robot-assisted partial nephrectomy, or RPN, is steadily replacing both traditional “open” surgery and laparoscopic partial nephrectomy, not only because it allows kidney cancer patients to be cured of the disease while keeping both kidneys, but because it has been shown to have fewer complications.
A study by researchers at Henry Ford’s Vattikuti Urology Institute, which compared the results of RPN to both open and laparoscopic kidney surgeries, found:
- Patients undergoing RPN were the least likely to receive a blood transfusion, while those who had open surgery were most likely.
- The same was true for developing complications after surgery or requiring a prolonged hospital stay.
- Those undergoing RPN were less likely to develop complications during their surgery.
- While the in-hospital mortality rates for all three types of partial nephrectomy were low, RPN resulted in no deaths compared to 0.3 percent for open surgery and 0.1 percent for laparoscopy.
“Because the patient retains both kidneys, they continue their function of removing waste from the bloodstream in the form of urine. When they don’t perform adequately – a condition known as renal insufficiency – it can result in cardiovascular disease and other illnesses, leading to hospitalization and sometimes death,” Dr. Rogers says.
AN HD TELEVISION NEWS PACKAGE IS AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD
AT THE FOLLOWING URL:
The file is in .mp4 form, H.264, and contains a complete VNR with voiceover & music, a split audio version w/o music, split audio with music but without v/o, and additional soundbites and b-roll. A script is included in the attached .pdf link.
For more information on this program or on Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital, contact Dwight Angell at (313) 876-8709. For technical questions about the video package, call Bill Harder at (248) 444-0254.
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