Hypothesis: Laparoscopic pancreatic resection can safely duplicate all of the open pancreatic procedures.
Design: A prospective evaluation of laparoscopic pancreatic resection. Surgical procedure, postoperative course, and follow-up data were collected.
Setting: Department of Abdominal Surgery at Haut-Lévêque Hospital, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France.
Patients: Sixty patients with presumed pancreatic neoplasms. Final diagnoses were benign disease in 57 patients (95%) and malignant pancreatic disease in 3 patients (5%).
Main outcome measures: Complication and success rates of resections.
Results: Twenty percent of procedures were switched to open laparotomy. Laparoscopically successful procedures included 20 distal pancreatectomies with spleen preservation, 5 distal splenopancreatectomies, 16 enucleations, 5 medial pancreatectomies, 1 pancreatoduodenectomy, and 1 total pancreatectomy. Postoperative death occurred in 1 patient (1.6%). The overall postoperative complication rate was 36%, including a 13% rate of clinical fistulae. In successful laparoscopic operations, the mean (SD) postoperative hospital stay was 12.7 (6) days. Multivariate, stepwise analysis identified pancreatic consistency and pancreatic resection that required anastomosis as independent factors of postoperative complication (P = .02 and P = .002, respectively). The 3 patients operated on for pancreatic malignancies were still alive at follow-up (median, 23 months); all patients with benign disease were alive at long-term follow-up.
Conclusions: This series demonstrates that laparoscopic pancreatic resection is not only feasible but also safe. Our study suggests that the best indications for a laparoscopic approach are presumably benign pancreatic tumors not requiring pancreaticoenteric reconstruction.