Cholecystectomy: comparison of minilaparotomy and laparoscopy

Laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) has become the most popular method of removing the gallbladder. Because it is an expensive operation requiring special training for the team, LC has been challenged by other methods of minimal-access surgery, e.g. by minilaparotomy (MC). This study was planned to be a single-surgeon prospective random study to compare minilaparotomy cholecystectomy (MC) and laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC), but was never done over the pilot phase. Twenty-four cholecystectomies were included, eight MC and 16 LC, the patients being comparable between the groups. In the MC group three patients (37%) had complications versus no complications in the LC group (p = 0.028). Postoperative hospital stay was longer in the MC group (median three days) than in the LC group (median one day), even when the patients with complications were excluded. Due to these discouraging experiences the extended random study was never done, and MC was abandoned.