presentation"

L. Giulianotti Background/Hypothesis Robotic surgery is an emerging technology with great potential but unknown cost-effectiveness. Aim of this study is to compare the Intra-hospital cost of Robotics with open surgery for living donor nephrectomy. Materials & Methods Two groups of patients were analyzed. Group 1 consisted of 39 consecutive patients who underwent open living donor nephrectomy (OLDN) performed at UIC from January 1997 to December 1999 and Group 2 of 165 consecutive who underwent robotic hand-assisted donor nephrectomy (RHADN) from January 2004 to June 2006. The time frames were selected to eliminate the learning curve for both the procedures.