Can community surgeons perform laparoscopic colorectal surgery with outcomes equivalent to tertiary care centers?

Laparoscopic colorectal surgery (LCS) performed in tertiary care centers has been well studied. It has been shown to provide improved short-term outcomes and comparable long-term outcomes to the conventional open approach. However, LCS performed in a community hospital setting has not been well studied. In a previous paper, we presented the short-term outcomes of 100 LCS performed by two community surgeons with no formal training in LCS. In this follow-up study, we present both short- and longer-term outcomes for 250 patients who underwent LCS.

This is a prospective study of 250 consecutive patients who underwent LCS at the North Bay District Hospital (a 200-bed community hospital located 350 km away from the nearest tertiary care center).

Between October 2000 and October 2006, 250 consecutive patients (130 women and 120 men, mean age of 64.4 +/- 13.7 years) underwent LCS for benign (N = 129) and malignant (N = 121) disease. Median operating time was 215.0 min (58.0-475.0 min) and the conversion rate was 7.2%. The intraoperative complication rate was 2.8%. There were 20 (8.0%) major postoperative complications and 42 (16.8%) minor postoperative complications. There was no intraoperative mortality. There were six 30-day mortalities due to ischemic bowel (1), stroke (1), myocardial infarction (3), and pneumonia (1). The median length of stay was 4.0 days (2.0-55.0 days). Disease-free survival for stages I-IV colorectal cancer (CRC) was 100, 97.2, 71.4, and 10% for a mean follow-up time of 36.9, 29.3, 27.9, and 21.1 months, respectively. The mean number of resected lymph nodes was 11.5 +/- 8.6.

We note that both our short and longer-term outcomes are similar to tertiary care centers. We therefore conclude that LCS can be performed in a community hospital setting with both short- and longer-term outcomes similar to tertiary care centers.