Open versus laparoscopic cholecystectomy for gallbladder carcinoma

Laparoscopic surgery has replaced conventional open cholecystectomy for benign gallbladder disease. A major concern is how to handle gallbladder cancer in the laparoscopic era, since there are numerous case reports of port site metastases from gallbladder cancer after laparoscopic cholecystectomy. There are also many experimental studies favoring the opinion that the laparoscopic technique implies a higher risk of spreading malignant disease. This opinion has gained wide acceptance despite little previous clinical effort to determine the risk of tumor dissemination and the lack of comparisons between open and laparoscopic surgery. This report is a short summary of our own studies and present knowledge with special respect to the clinical aspects of the development and incidence of abdominal wall metastases. Among 270 patients with verified gallbladder carcinoma in whom 210 had open surgery and 60 a laparoscopic cholecystectomy, 12 patients (6.5%) in the open cholecystectomy group and 9 (15%) in the laparoscopic group developed incisional metastases. Although the sparse clinical documentation does not unavoidably mean that laparoscopic cholecystectomy has an increased risk of disseminating tumor cells, we recommend open surgery in cases of known or suspected gallbladder carcinoma.