Introduction: Intracorporeal suturing is considered to be the most challenging aspect of laparoscopic and robotic surgery. To overcome this problem, barbed self-retaining sutures have been effectively employed in various minimally invasive endourologic surgeries. However, the use of this suture has been recently cautioned for pyeloplasty due to a high failure rate. Our objective was to report our experience using barbed suture during robotic pyeloplasty.
Methods: We retrospectively identified 13 consecutive patients who underwent robotic pyeloplasty with a barbed monofilament (4-0 V-Loc™) suture for the ureteropelvic anastomosis from 2011 to 2014. We compared these patients to 12 consecutive patients who underwent robotic pyeloplasty with a 4-0 nonbarbed suture from 2007 to 2011. We evaluated patient demographics, operative times, preoperative and postoperative symptoms, renal function, and diuretic renograms (DRG). Successful repair was defined as resolution of preoperative symptoms and/or T½ improvement on DRG to less than 20 minutes.
Results: The median age was 26 (interquartile range [IQR] 20.7-38) years and 35 (IQR 18.3-44) years for the barbed and nonbarbed suture groups, respectively. In the barbed suture group, preoperative DRG revealed ureteropelvic junction obstruction (UPJO) in 11 patients, equivocal UPJO (T½ 10-20 minutes) in one patient, and no obstruction in one patient. In the nonbarbed group, preoperative DRG revealed UPJO in 10 patients, equivocal UPJO in one patient, and no obstruction in one patient. In the barbed suture group, postoperative DRG was obtained in 11 patients, which showed no obstruction in 10/11 patients with 92% of patients experiencing symptom resolution. Similarly, postoperative DRG was obtained in 11 patients in the nonbarbed group, which showed no obstruction in 10/11 patients with 100% postoperative symptom resolution.
Conclusions: In the largest series reporting use of V-Loc suture for robotic pyeloplasty, the V-Loc suture was safely and effectively used for robotic pyeloplasty repair.