Surgical Video Review of Warm Ischemia Time during Laparoscopic Partial Nephrectomy and Impact on Positive Surgical Margins and Postoperative Complications

Introduction: A surgical video review is an emerging tool for quality improvement, especially in complex surgeries such as laparoscopic partial nephrectomy (LPN). Assessing and measuring the warm ischemia time (WIT) during LPN by dividing it into the time used for resection (ResT), time used for reconstruction (RecT) and intermediate time (IntT) has not been performed before. This study aimed to analyze the factors that can influence all these surgical times and assess their impact on positive surgical margins (PSM) and complication rates. Methods: We evaluated 36 surgical video recordings from patients who underwent LPN and measured WIT, ResT, RecT and IntT with a stopwatch. Factors such as tumor characteristics and surgeon experience were also recorded. SPSS software was used to identify the predictor factors for all these surgical times and to correlate the ResT with PSM and RecT with the complication rate. Results: We recorded a mean WIT of 887 seconds. The mean ResT, RecT and IntT were 240 (27.2% of WIT), 473 (52.6% of WIT) and 173 s (20.2% of WIT), respectively. We found a moderate correlation between the WIT (p = 0.030), IntT and the R.E.N.A.L. score (p = 0.019). The surgeon with less than 100 LPN had significantly longer WIT, ResT, and RecT values, with means of 977 (p = 0.015), 268 (p = 0.019) and 530 seconds (p = 0.015), respectively. No correlation was found between ResT and PSM (p = 0.418); however, a strong correlation was found between RecT and the probability of developing complications (p = 0.012). Conclusion: The surgeon’s experience influences WIT, ResT, and RecT, but not IntT, which depends on tumor complexity. RecT affects the probability of developing complications. IntT represents a fifth of the WIT and efforts to reduce the WIT should focus on reducing the IntT for complex tumors, by improving surgical planning.