Difficult Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy-When and Where is the Need to Convert?

Abstract

Laparoscopic cholecystectomy has now become the treatment of choice for the gall bladder stone. With increasing experience, surgeon has started to take more difficult cases which were considered relative contra indications for laparoscopic removal of gall bladder few years back. We conducted this study at our hospital and included all laparoscopic cholecystectomy done from May'08 to January'10. Total time taken in surgery, conversion rate and complication rate were analysed. Factors making laparoscopic cholecystectomy difficult were also analysed. We defined difficult laparoscopic cholecystectomy when we found -dense fibrotic adhesions in and around Callot's triangle, gangrenous gall bladder, empyma, large stone impacted at gall bladder neck, contracted gall bladder, Mirrizi's syndrome, h/o biliary pancreatitis, CBD stones, acute cholecystitis of Out of 206 cases done during above period, 56 cases were considered difficult. Only two cases were converted to open. With growing experience and technical advancement surgery can be completed in most of the difficult cases. This is important because recently it is shown in literature that laparoscopic cholecystectomy is associated with less morbidity than open method irrespective of duration of the surgery.