Surgical treatment of the gallbladder and common bile duct by minimally invasive surgery

The laparoscopic cholecystectomy is the most used minimally invasive surgical technique. Seventy-five percent of all gallstone diseases are actually treated by this procedure, as proved by an impressive comparison of Swiss, Austrian and German data. More than 265,000 cholecystectomies are analyzed. Twelve percent of all operations are performed in an acute situation, intraoperative complications are found in 1%; the postoperative complications is 5%. The lethality in all countries is between 0.1 and 0.2%.