A laparoscopy allows the surgeon to perform an operation by inserting a device with a camera attached through a small opening in the patients body. Research has been carried out at 4 different hospitals around the world to compare laparoscopy surgery against the usual "open surgery" for people diagnosed with Kidney Cancer. According to a study in the Journal of Urology the two procedures produced the same results.

It was find that those patients who had their kidney cancer removed using a laparoscope usually did better than those who had open surgery. It was found that they loss less blood, spent less time in hospital and so were out of work for less time as well.

Unfortunately, although this procedure may be better for the patient they are much more complex and time consuming for the doctor. In fact it can take doctor's many years to decide whether a new treatment will achieve the same results as the more standard types of surgery available and that have been performed for many years.

In a study carried out by Dr Andrew J Portis and his colleagues on 133 patients suffering from kidney cancer and who had surgery (entire kidney tumor was removed along with any remaining normal kidney) to January 1996 he found that the 64 who were treated using the laparoscopic technique loss less blood, spent less time in hospital but it took the surgeons longer to do the operation. The other 69 patients were treated using open surgery.

Also it was found that there was not difference in the number of patients that survived in the two groups and they both had the same rate of local recurrence of the cancer that they were suffering from.

When looking at the results of the study they based them on four standards so had four ways in which to compare the two procedures against each other.

In fact the evidence shows that the patients whose kidney cancer was removed by use of the laparoscope method did just as well as those who had been treated using open surgery.

Certainly things may well improve with this kind of kidney surgery as the doctors learn more about how to use the equipment correctly and so their skills improve.