Laparoscopic treatment of acute cholecystitis. Personal experience and preliminary results

: At the beginning of their experience the authors limited laparoscopic treatment to simple cholelithiasis. They then extended this method to acute cholecystitis. They report here 11 cases with no mortality and morbidity and a conversion rate equal to 18.18% (2 cases of new acute phase of chronic cholecystitis after deferred emergency surgical treatment). The postoperative stay in hospital never exceeded 72 hours for the 9 cases of laparoscopic cholecystectomy, while the 2 cases of laparotomic respectively on the VII and VIII days. In consideration of what is reported in the literature and of personal experience, even if limited, the authors acknowledge that laparoscopic cholecystectomy if it is practised by an expert surgeon in the presence of precise indications and with a low conversion rate.