Shanghai Children's Medical Center Performs China's First Single-Port Robotic Bladder Reconstruction in a Child

A 9-year-old boy named Xiaoyu had suffered involuntary urine leakage five to ten times a day since the age of 2. He was diagnosed with a neurogenic bladder with a capacity of only 50 ml, together with left kidney atrophy and bilateral vesicoureteral reflux. A team led by Sun Jie, director of urology at Shanghai Children's Medical Center, performed single-port laparoscopic robot-assisted bilateral ureteral reimplantation plus bladder augmentation, making only a 3-centimeter incision at the navel.

The team completed ureteral correction, harvested a segment of ileum to fashion a patch enlarging the bladder, and performed intestinal anastomosis in the same procedure. The operation took under 400 minutes and intraoperative blood loss was just 50 ml, far less than the 100 to 300 ml reported in comparable cases. It is the first single-port robot-assisted bladder augmentation in a child reported in China or abroad.

Xiaoyu's leakage improved markedly and his kidney function was effectively protected, allowing him to return to school. The department has performed more than 200 minimally invasive procedures using a domestically made single-port robot over the past three years.