Bilateral Posterior Retroperitoneoscopic Adrenalectomy with Cortical Sparing on Right Side
Yale School of Medicine

Taylor C Brown, MD, MHS
Yale School of Medicine

Tobias Carling, MD, PhD, FACS
Yale School of Medicine

Cortical-sparing adrenalectomy allows for the resection of adrenal tumors while preserving unaffected adrenal tissue to prevent adrenal insufficiency. This is especially important in patients with bilateral adrenal tumors, typically pheochromocytomas.

Posterior retroperitoneoscopic adrenalectomy (PRA) allows for a minimally invasive approach to adrenal gland resection compared with the more traditional laparoscopic transabdominal adrenalectomy and open approaches. This approach is ideal to address patients with bilateral disease and was used in this case of a 31-year-old female patient presenting with bilateral pheochromocytomas in the setting of multiple endocrine neoplasia 2A syndrome and coexisting medullary thyroid carcinoma of the right thyroid lobe. A close review of her imaging demonstrated normal-appearing adrenal cortex tissue on the right side that allowed for cortical-sparing adrenalectomy on that side.