Intraoperative ultrasound in robot-assisted partial nephrectomy: State of the art.

Introduction: Nephron-sparing surgery (NSS) is of one of the most studied fields in urology due to the balancing between renal function preservation and oncological safety of the procedure. Aim of this short review is to report the state of the art of intra-operative ultrasound as an operative tool to improve localization of small renal masses partially or completely endophytic during robotassisted partial nephrectomy (RAPN).

Material And Methods: We performed a literature review by electronic database on Pubmed about the use of intra-operative US in RAPN to evaluate the usefulness and the feasibility of this procedure.