Laparoscopic radical cystectomy. Where do we stand?

Laparoscopic Radical Cystectomy (LRC) has been proposed since 1999 as a less invasive alternative to Open Radical Cystectomy (ORC). Pioneers of the technique claim that LRC led to faster recovery, shorter hospital stay and more rapid return to daily activities respect to ORC while offering the same functional and oncological results. About 900 cases are published in peer reviewed papers. The greatest series is formed by a cohort of 85 patients. The preferred urinary diversion is the ileal conduit (46%) although in recent series the ileal neobladder is increasingly adopted. Urinary diversion is usually performed extracorporeally through an abdomen incision of about 5-10 used also for the extraction of the specimen. The mean or median follow up of LRC series does not exceed 31 months and the longest follow up reported up to now is 58 months in the series examined. Overall survival rate varies from 72% to 95%. While feasibility of LRC has been demonstrated, cancer control has far from been assured, mainly in consequence of limited follow-up of the series and an unexpected low disease free survival rate. Moreover the advocated advantages related to LRC seem to be related to patients' selection rather than to less invasiveness. Actually when characteristics of the patient and of the disease are similar, outcomes of LRC and ORC, in terms of hospitalization and recovery, are comparable. LRC is currently an experimental procedure which can not be considered at the present time a concrete alternative to ORC.