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©The Author(s) 2026. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Transplant. Mar 18, 2026; 16(1): 113075
Published online Mar 18, 2026. doi: 10.5500/wjt.v16.i1.113075
Published online Mar 18, 2026. doi: 10.5500/wjt.v16.i1.113075
Robot-assisted vs hand-assisted laparoscopic donor nephrectomy in the United Kingdom: Equivalent outcomes in the first national series
Chrysanthos D Christou, Savvas Antoniadis, Avishek Majumder, Rhana Zakri, Jonathon Olsburgh, Chris Callaghan, Georgios Papadakis, Kiran Sran, Martin Drage, Nicos Kessaris, Ioannis Loukopoulos, Department of Renal Transplantation, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, London SE1 9RT, United Kingdom
Karel Decaestecker, Department of Urology, Ghent University Hospital, Ghent 9000, Belgium
Ben Challacombe, Department of Urology, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, London SE1 9RT, United Kingdom
Author contributions: Christou CD contributed to data analysis, and drafted the manuscript; Christou CD, Antoniadis S, and Majumder A contributed to data collection; Loukopoulos I conceptualized the study and had the overall supervision; Christou CD, Antoniadis S, Majumder A, Zakri R, Olsburgh J, Callaghan C, Papadakis G, Sran K, Drage M, Decaestecker K, Challacombe B, Kessaris N, and Loukopoulos I reviewed and edited the final manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: This study has been approved by the TRU Clinical Governance Committee.
Informed consent statement: Patients were not required to give informed consent to the study because the analysis used anonymous clinical data that were obtained after each patient agreed to treatment by written consent.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement-checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement-checklist of items.
Data sharing statement: Anonymized data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request, subject to institutional data governance policies.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Ioannis Loukopoulos, MD, Consultant, Department of Renal Transplantation, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, Great Maze Pond, London SE1 9RT, United Kingdom. i.loukopoulos@nhs.net
Received: August 14, 2025
Revised: September 12, 2025
Accepted: November 26, 2025
Published online: March 18, 2026
Processing time: 153 Days and 11.2 Hours
Revised: September 12, 2025
Accepted: November 26, 2025
Published online: March 18, 2026
Processing time: 153 Days and 11.2 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: This is the first United Kingdom study to compare robot-assisted (RALDN) and hand-assisted laparoscopic donor nephrectomy outcomes. In a matched cohort of 140 donors, both techniques achieved equivalent safety and efficacy, with no differences in donor or recipient renal function at one year. Although RALDN had longer warm ischaemia and hospital stay, outcomes improved as the surgical team advanced along the learning curve. This work demonstrates the feasibility of establishing RALDN in a high-volume United Kingdom center without prior robotic experience, providing a foundation for further integration of robotic platforms in kidney transplantation.