Equipment and Strategies of Staging Laparoscopy

The tenth century Arabian physician Abulkasim (936–1013) [1] is credited with the first documented use of reflected light to view an internal body cavity. Although the procedure was successful, thermal injury from the light source limited the technique. Improvements in optics in the latter half of the nineteenth century rekindled interest in the procedure. Around the turn of the nineteenth century, in Europe, particularly in Austria and Germany, many different centers were exploring endoscopy and laparoscopy. Kussmaul used a primitive endoscope to inspect the stomach of a professional sword swallower and later, in 1869, Karl Stoerk, an Austrian laryngologist, inspected the esophagus of a patient with an instrument comprised of different jointed segments that could be straightened after insertion. In 1901, Georg Kelling [2], a German physician, coined the term “celioscopy” in describing his use of a cystoscope to examine the peritoneal cavity of a dog, utilizing insufflation with air. In 1910, Jacobaeus [3], a Swedish physician, reported the first use of celioscopy in humans and in 1912 he published a 97-patient series [4]. The first reported use of laparoscopy in the United States occurred in 1911 when Bertram Bernheim of Johns Hopkins University performed “organoscopy” on two patients [5], one of which was a patient of W.S. Halstead, diagnosing localized pancreatic cancer, which was later confirmed at open laparotomy by Dr. Halstead.