[Radical prostatectomy: presentation of 2 varying technics for control of the venous plexus and the implementation of a vesico-urethral anastomosis].

Even if the first radical prostatectomy was performed more than ninety years ago by Hugh Hampton Young, it's only during the 20 last years that an anatomical approach to this technique has been developed, to reduce the number of complications routinely described. The evolution of the procedure allow us how to make the operation safer, to perform it in a bloodless field and increase the possibility to preserve continence and potency. We would like to show you how two simple technical variations for the control of dorsal vein complex and the vesico-uretral anastomosis can, at our opinion, decrease the number of operative and postoperative complications. A retrospective review was performed on 168 clinical localised prostate cancer patient (stages T1 to T2 N0 M0) treated in our hospital between December 1987 and March 1998. All these patients underwent retropubic radical prostatectomy with pelvic lymphadenectomy. The preoperative clinical stage was T1 for 48.2% and T2 for 51.8%. The mean age of the patients at operation was 64.4 years and the mean PSA level at diagnosis was 12.4 ng/ml. Our results revealed that 97% of the patients are now perfectly continent and that the continence was immediately recovered by 16% at the removal of the bladder catheter.