Laparoscopy

A laparoscopy is a surgical procedure that allows the surgeon to access the inside of the abdomen and the pelvis. Laparoscopy is minimally invasive, or keyhole, surgery. The surgeon does not have to make large incisions (cuts) in the skin. This is made possible with an instrument called a laparoscope.

Laparoscope
A laparoscope is a small flexible tube that contains a light source and a camera. The camera relays images of the inside the abdomen or pelvis to a television monitor. The surgeon makes a minor incision in the skin, passes the laparoscope through the incision and studies the organs and tissues inside the abdomen or pelvis. The advantages of this technique over traditional open surgery is that people who have a laparoscopy have:

a faster recovery time, less pain after the operation, and minimal scarring.

Diagnostic uses
A laparoscopy can be used to help diagnose a wide range of conditions that develop inside the abdomen or pelvis, such as pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) and liver cancer.

Therapeutic uses
Laparoscopies can be used to carry out surgical procedures. Small surgical instruments and devices, such as lasers, can be passed through incisions in the skin to perform procedures such as removing a damaged or diseased organ.

How common are laparoscopies?

Laparoscopies are very common in certain areas of medicine, including:

gynaecology (the study and treatment of conditions that affect the female reproductive system), and gastroenterology (the study and treatment of conditions that affect the digestive system).

An estimated 250,000 women have laparoscopic surgery for gynaecological conditions each year in the UK.

Safety
A laparoscopy is generally regarded as a very safe procedure. Serious complications as a result of surgery are rare and occur in an estimated 1 in a 1,000 cases. Possible complications include:

damage to organs, such as the bladder or bowel, and injury to a major artery (blood vessel).

Last reviewed: 30/12/2009

Diagnostic laparoscopy
It is often possible to make a diagnosis using non-invasive methods, such as ultrasound, a computerised tomography (CT) scan or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan. However, sometimes the only way to confirm a diagnosis is to directly study the affected part of the body using a laparoscope. Laparoscopies are now widely used to diagnose many different conditions and investigate certain symptoms. For example, they may be used in cases such as: pelvic inflammatory disease, endometriosis, ectopic pregnancy (a pregnancy that develops outside the womb), female infertility, and unexplained abdominal or pelvic pain. A laparoscopy can also be used to diagnose certain types of cancers. In such cases, the laparoscope is used to obtain a sample of suspected cancerous tissue so that it can be sent to a laboratory for testing. This is known as a biopsy. Cancers that can be diagnosed using a laparoscopy include: liver cancer, pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer, cancer of the bile duct, and cancer of the gall bladder.

Therapeutic laparoscopy
Types of therapeutic laparoscopic surgery include:

removal of an inflamed appendix in cases of appendicitis, where it is thought that the risk of the appendix bursting is high, removing the gallbladder, which is often used to treat gallstones, removing a section of the intestine, which is often used to treat digestive conditions, such as Crohns disease or diverticulitis, that do not respond to medication, repairing hernias, repairing bleeding stomach ulcers, carrying out a female sterilisation, treating ectopic pregnancy (it is usually necessary to remove the embryo to prevent damage to the fallopian tubes), removing the womb (hysterectomy), which is sometimes used to treat pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), endometriosis and heavy, painful periods, and removing some or all of an organ that has been affected by cancer, such as the ovaries, prostate, liver, colon, kidney or bladder.