The development of laparoscopy in the field of urology has been considerable since 1991. In order to evaluate the use of this technique in the French urology community and the need to develop evaluating and teaching structures for this technique, a postal questionnaire was sent to 714 members of the Association Française d'Urologie (AFU) on June 23, 1993. The reply rate was 22% and 72 of the responders (46%) performed urological laparoscopy. A total of 684 laparoscopic urological procedures were reported, corresponding to an average of 9.5 procedures per operator. 45 operators had performed fewer than 16 laparoscopic procedures. The complication rate was 5% with a perioperative mortality of 0.3%. These figures should be considered to be minimal values. Eighty six responders (54%) did not perform laparoscopy. Forty seven of them (57%) were waiting for these techniques to demonstrate their practical value. Eighty two urologists thought that laparoscopic lymph node dissection had a role to play in the diagnostic and therapeutic strategy of prostatic cancer. One hundred and thirteen urologists (85%) considered that the development of urological laparoscopy would be moderate. Eighty nine urologists answer the question concerning possible training in these techniques and 77 of them intended to learn laparoscopic techniques.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)