Abstract

The intracorporeal suture is considered one of the most difficult and challenging procedures of the urologic laparoscopic surgery. The suture of the renal parenchyma during partial nephrectomy and the vesico‐urethral anastomosis in radical prostatectomy are critical and time consuming steps requiring a long learning curve. In an attempt to optimize these procedures, it was created on March 2009 a unidirectional self‐retaining bearded suture to maintain the tension in the suture lines even avoiding the need to run knots. After a brief experience using a barbed suture during the laparoscopic partial nephrectomy with a subjective feeling of having made the procedure simpler, faster and more effective, we decided to conduct a systematic literature review on the use of of the usual polyglactin vs. a barbed suture to ascertain the real benefit its use. Comparing to the usual polyglactin suture, the use of a barbed one appears to simplify the nephrorrhaphy technique during laparoscopic partial nephrectomy significantly reducing the warm ischemia time and possibly the perioperative complications. Its use in the laparoscopic radical prostatectomy allows performing the vesico‐urethral anastomosis safely and significantly faster with similar postoperative complication rates. There may be an overall cost reduction using this suture, although stronger global analyses are still needed.