Surgeons at Samsung Medical Center’s (SMC) Urinary Cancer Center held a symposium commemorating its completion of 1,000 robotic partial kidney resection surgeries for the first time in Korea, the hospital said Tuesday.

Robotic partial kidney resection is advantageous as it minimizes the loss of kidney function during surgery, while also providing quick recovery. However, only a skilled surgeon can conduct the operation as the surgery has a high risk of massive hemorrhaging as well as the difficulty of using a retroperitoneum robotic surgery to perform in a narrow space.

At the symposium, SMC’s Urinary Cancer Center said its cancer recurrence rate was less than 1 percent during the five years after the surgery. Such a low recurrence rate is crucial as the operation leaves the kidney intact, which may become a problem if cancer reoccurs, it said.

“In the future, more kidney cancer patients will be able to have both a complete treatment of cancer and preservation of their kidney functions,” said Professor Seo Sung-il, who is in charge of the robotic partial kidney resection surgeries at the hospital.

Urinary Cancer Center Director Jung Sung-soo, also said, “In the field of urinary cancer, the technique of using robotic assistance is evolving continuously. In the future, we will accelerate the research into such surgery methods so that Korean medical care can lead the development of various techniques using robotic-assisted surgeries.”​​​​

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