Watch the First Robotic Level III IVC Thrombectomy (Video)

Between 4 and 10 percent of renal cell carcinoma patients have tumor thrombi that manifest within the renal vein or inferior vena cava (IVC).

Surgical treatment of this condition — radical nephrectomy with en bloc vena caval tumor thrombectomy — is challenging and typically has been performed using an open procedure. More recently, surgeons at high-volume centers of excellence have employed laparoscopic or robot-assisted approaches for resection of level I-II tumor thrombi.

Surgeons at Cleveland Clinic’s Glickman Urological & Kidney Institute recently performed the institution’s first robot-assisted level III renal cancer-associated IVC thrombectomy, demonstrating its feasibility in carefully selected patients.

In this five-minute video, Georges Pascal-Haber, MD, PhD, demonstrates each step in the complex robotic procedure, including strategies for success. The surgery was the subject of a presentation at the American Urological Association’s 2016 annual meeting.