LAPAROSCOPIC CHOLECYSTECTOMY BY SECTORISATION OF PORT SITES

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the results of 160 consecutive laparoscopic cholecystectomies using sectorisation based port site selection to improve ergonomics for surgeons.                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Design: Descriptive study. Place and Duration of Study: PNS Shifa Karachi, Pakistan from Feb 2011 to Feb 2012.                                                               Patients and Methods: In this prospective study, 160 consecutive patients had undergone laparoscopic cholecystectomy in a tertiary care hospital using sectorisation for trocar placement. All patients with symptomatic gallstones, acute calculous cholecystitis and empyema gallbladder were included. Patients with choledocholithiasis were excluded from the study. The collected data included age, sex, diagnosis, history of previous surgery, conversion to open surgery and its reasons, operative time, post-operative hospital stay, complications and laparoscopy related complications to the surgeon such as shoulder pain, wrist stress and pain, finger joint pain and stress exhaustion.                                                       Result: One hundred and sixty patients underwent laparoscopic cholecystectomy with mean age 45 ± 12.9 years. Female to male ratio was 7.8: 1. A total of 110 patients had chronic cholecystitis / biliary colic, 34 patients were with acute cholecystitis and 16 patients had diagnosis of empyema gallbladder. The mean operative time was 35.3±14.6 min. Conversion rate to open surgery was 1.2%. Complications included bleeding from cystic artery (n=1) and injury to common hepatic duct (CHD) (n=1). One patient developed port site hernia post operatively. There was no incidence of laparoscopy related complications in surgeon such as pain shoulder, strains on the wrist joint, stress exhaustion and hand-finger joint pain. Conclusion: Sectorisation technique can be used in laparoscopic cholecystectomy in order to avoid the physical constraints of “laparoscopic shoulder”, hand finger joint pain, tenosynovitis, stress exhaustion, and hand muscle injury without increasing any morbidity to the patients.