New PhD Dissertation on Patient-reported outcomes following living donor nephrectomy

On November 26 2008 Marit Helen Andersen from the Interventional Centre and The Department of Surgery at Rikshospitalet University Hospital defended her Doctoral Thesis at Faculty of Medicine at University of Oslo. The topic was Patient-reported outcomes following living donor nephrectomy. The purpose of her study was to assess clinical and patient reported outcomes following living kidney donor neprectomy, with particular focus on patient reported outcomes. A combination of quantitative and qualitative research methodologies was used. In a randomized controlled trial with 122 donors a comparison of laparoscopic and open donor nephrectomy was made focusing on donor safety, perioperative pain, convalesence, health status and over all quality of life at 1, 6, and 12 months. The results demonstrated that the conventional open donor nephrectomy is superior to laparoscopic donor nephrectomy with regard to donor safety. Yet, an uncomplicated laparoscopic donor neprectomy has impotant short trem advantages such as less analgesic requiremets, less post operative pain, better health status and a shorter sick leave as compared to to the open approach. However, long term follow up only revealed significant differences in favour of laparoscopy when adjusting for reoperations and conversions. She therefore concluded that long term benefits are hard to prove in favour of lapasoscopic technique. The image shows Marit after receiving a present from her main superviser professor Erik Fosse from the Interventional Centre.