Abstract
Simple but clever—that describes any good surgical procedure. Dr. de Castro Abreu and colleagues from the University of Southern California have come up with an excellent and simple modification to the difficult problem of a large protruding intravesical lobe of the prostate. As they point out, deviation of the Foley balloon is the first tip-off to the surgeon that a large median lobe is coming. Second, a clear picture of the trigonal anatomy and ureteral orifices allows the surgeon to quickly get into the correct plane and onto the seminal vesicles, as opposed to developing a subcapsular plane, which can lead to the disastrous result of leaving prostatic tissue behind.
I would encourage all robotic surgeons to study and adopt this clever technique.