Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy

Abstract

E. Mühe [1] of Böblingen, Germany, performed the first laparoscopic cholecystectomy in 1985. However, most authors have given credit to Phillipe Mouret of Lyon, France, who in 1987 facilitated the procedure by rotating the entire right lobe of the liver in a cephalad direction with traction applied to the gallbladder itself. This maneuver allowed the gallbladder and porta hepatis to be viewed from a telescope placed at the umbilicus and directed cranially toward the undersurface of the liver. Surgeons in Paris and Bordeaux subsequently learnel the procedure and initiated the first clinical series of laparoscopic cholecystectomies [2,3]. This procedure was first performed in the United States in mid-1988 by surgeons in private practice [4]. Academic medical centers were slower to accept laparoscopic cholecystectomy, but many large clinical series were reported over the following years [5–13]. Laparoscopic cholecystectomy was adopted at a rate unprecedented in American surgery because of our free-market medical system, the preference of patients for “less invasive” procedures, and the marketing effort by individuals and hospitals. Laparoscopic cholecystectomy rapidly became the new “gold standard” therapy for symptomatic cholelithiasis [6,14•].