Cushing's disease: role of bilateral adrenalectomy

INTRODUCTION

Laparoscopic bilateral adrenalectomy (BAD) is one of the treatments of Cushing's Disease (CD), but its indications and outcome is debated.

METHODS

The literature on BAD was reviewed as part of a work performed for the Cushing's disease guideline.

RESULTS

The surgical morbidity of BAD is reported between 10 and 18% and no mortality has been reported in the largest series. Because of the endocrine sacrifice it will be mostly performed after a multidisciplinary team discussion in selected cases of refractory CD (mostly after failure of pituitary surgery and/or medical treatment). It is also frequently discussed in female patients desiring pregnancy. Corticotroph tumor progression occurs in 40% of the patients but is in most patients manageable when detected early by a careful long term monitoring with pituitary MRI and ACTH assays after BAD.

CONCLUSION

BAD is a safe and effective treatment of CD used in specific situations and requiring long term monitoring.

Outcomes of laparoscopic adrenalectomy Conventional technique versus laparo-endoscopic single-site surgery

OBJECTIVE

Perform a comparative analysis of the outcomes of conventional laparoscopic adrenalectomy (LC) and the newly introduced laparo-endoscopic single-site surgery (LESS) over ten years.

MATERIAL AND METHOD

We retrospectively reviewed the experience of a single surgeon from our medical centre with laparoscopic adrenalectomy, either through LC or LESS, with 75 patients between August 2005 and June 2015. Here we describe: age, sex, size, lateralization, preoperative diagnosis, total operating time, intraoperative bleeding, conversion to open surgery, mean hospital stay, intra- and postoperative complications and histopathology report. We used Fischer's and the Chi-squared tests to compare categorical data and Student's T-test for a comparison of the means with a normal distribution. Statistical significance was determined when p<0.05.

RESULTS

LC was performed in 51 patients, and LESS in 24 patients. No statistical significance was found for total operating time (LC: 103.9±13.21min vs. LESS: 101.46±13.65min; p=0.07), estimated bleeding (LC: 258.82±136.92cc vs. LESS: 131,25±36,74cc; p=0.46), intraoperative complications (5 cases in LC, none in LESS; p=0.47), nor for postoperative complications (two in LC vs. one in LESS; p=0.69), as catalogued according to the modified Clavien classification system. We detected a statistical significance difference in the comparisons of the mean hospital stay, which was reduced in LESS (LC: 3.55±0.69 days vs. LESS: 2.21±0.31 days; p=0.01).

CONCLUSIONS

Adrenalectomy with LC is the approach of choice for surgical treatment of adrenal pathologies. The LESS technique is safe, improves the cosmetic results, and does not increase mortality if performed by experienced teams.