Background: Kidney transplantation is a standard treatment for end-stage renal disease. Living-donor kidney transplantation has gained popularity in the last few decades because of the lack of cadaveric donors available. Laparoscopic donor nephrectomy has become a standard method of kidney procurement in our institute, but there are some limitations on this approach, including its impracticality with right-sided kidneys and kidneys with multiple or complex vascular anatomies.

Objective: To report our experiences of robotic-assisted laparoscopic donor nephrectomy (RALDN), including the details of operation and the operative outcomes of RALDN, which may become a standard approach in the future.

Material and Method: Our institute has performed RALDN on two cases since 2015. Data including the donors’ characteristics, the surgical techniques used, and operative outcomes were described.

Results: Two donors underwent RALDN. Both donated left kidneys had a single renal artery, renal vein, and ureter. The operative time were 4 hours, 55 minutes for the first case and 3 hours, 50 minutes for the second case. Operative blood losses for the first and second donor were 150 and 300 ml respectively, and neither donor received a blood transfusion. Warm ischemic time were 12 minutes for the first case and 4 minutes for the second case. There were no perioperative complications. The patients’ hospital stays were 4 days for the first case and 5 days for the second case. There was no delayed graft function in either recipient.

Conclusion: RALDN is feasible and provides better visualization and more precise dissection than the pure laparoscopic approach. In the future, this approach may overtake standard laparoscopic technique for difficult donor nephrectomy cases.

Keywords: Kidney transplantation, Renal transplantation, Robotic-assisted laparoscopic donor nephrectomy, Robotic nephrectomy, donor nephrectomy