Laparoscopic cholecystectomy is rapidly becoming accepted as the best method for the treatment of symptomatic cholelithiasis. Randomized clinical trials comparing laparoscopic cholecystectomy with open cholecystectomy are unlikely to be performed. In order to compare these two operations, surgeons need an historical control group of patients who have undergone a conventional open cholecystectomy. The aim of this study was to document a control group of patients having an open cholecystectomy and compare them with patients having a laparoscopic cholecystectomy. This was achieved by a retrospective study of all patients who had an open cholecystectomy from January 1985 to December 1989. Four hundred and fifty-seven patients, 345 women and 112 men, had a cholecystectomy. Exploration of the common bile duct (ECBD) was performed in 59 (12.5%) cases. The mean operative duration was 73 min for cholecystectomy and 118 min for cholecystectomy and ECBD. The shortest mean postoperative stay was for an elective cholecystectomy (5.3 days) and the longest mean postoperative stay was for urgent admissions requiring ECBD (12.0 days). Operative dissection was difficult in 14.1% of elective cases and 51.8% of urgent cases. Ninety-seven (19.5%) patients had an additional procedure, unrelated to cholelithiasis, at the same operation; 44 did not require laparotomy, 31 had interval appendectomies, and 22 other cases required laparotomy in order to perform the additional procedure. All but one patient required postoperative narcotic analgesia. The mean duration of narcotic analgesia was 2.3 days. The complication rate was 35.2% for cholecystectomy and 62.5% for ECBD. If pulmonary atelectasis is excluded as a complication, these complication rates fell to 6.8% and 20.1%, respectively.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)