Use of a lighted stent to identify the urethra during transanal abdominoperineal resection

Excerpt

Although laparoscopic surgery for rectal cancer has been gaining acceptance with the gradual accumulation of evidence, it remains a technically demanding procedure in patients with a narrow pelvis, bulky tumors, or obesity. To overcome the technical difficulties of laparoscopic surgery, the transanal total mesorectal excision (taTME) approach has recently attracted much attention as a promising approach because of the quality improvement of total mesorectal excision [1‐5]. However, there exists an inherent risk of injuring the male urethra using this approach [6‐9]. In addition, urethral injury is more commonly associated with abdominoperineal resection (APR) with a reported incidence of approximately 3% compared with other sphincter-preserving rectal surgeries [10, 11]. Until now, only a few reports have assessed the usefulness of a lighted urethral stent during taTME [6, 7, 9]. …