ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Few studies have systematically explored the factors influencing the difficulty of hand-assisted laparoscopic living donor nephrectomy. To investigate the relationship between the difficulty of hand-assisted laparoscopic living donor nephrectomy and postoperative complications of the donor as well as the recipient, and then build a model for predicting the difficulty of surgery. METHODS: In this study, 60 patients who underwent hand-assisted laparoscopic living donor nephrectomy by the same surgeon from September 2022 to March 2024 were included as the modeling group. 20 patients operated on by another surgeon served as the external validation group. The subjective score (1-3 points) of surgical difficulty was used as the quantitative index of surgical difficulty. Pearson and Spearman correlation tests were used to explore the correlation between preoperative data and surgical difficulty scores of kidney donors, and finally built a prediction model through multiple linear regression analysis. RESULTS: With the increase in the difficulty of operation, both donors and recipients' complications were increased. Linear regression analysis showed that only the number of renal arteries, visceral fat thickness and MAP score were independent risk factors for the difficulty of hand-assisted laparoscopic living donor nephrectomy. The prediction equation is as follows: Difficulty score = 0.584*Number of renal arteries + 0.731*MAP score + 0.110*visceral fat thickness. CONCLUSIONS: Donors with higher surgical difficulty are more likely to have serious complications after surgery as well as the recipient. We also established a reliable prediction model for the difficulty of hand-assisted laparoscopic donor nephrectomy.