Laparoscopy and pediatric urology.

Minimally invasive surgery has became in the recent years a synonyme of laparoscopic surgery. It may be simply attributed to the significant advances in surgical technique worldwide. However it must be stated that laparoscopy has not found such a wide application in pediatric urology, as in other surgical specialities.

The manuscript “The retroperitoneal approach to distal part of the ureter [1] illustrates own experience of the surgeons from the excellent center of pediatric urology of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków in original operative approach to the distal ureter in children. This novel technique was first introduced into a clinical practice by Chen in 2002 [2]. It enables a safe approach to the distal prevesical portion of the ureter and diminishes the risk of injury to the perivesical neural plexus. The author’s statement that classical surgical technique may be regarded in pediatric urological patients as minimally invasive is important [3, 4].