The Role of Diagnostic Laparoscopy in Surgery Our Experience at SSIMRC, Karnataka

As abdomen is rightly called as a Pandora's Box, a clinician often gets confused with the diagnosis in a case of acute or chronic abdominal pain in spite of having so many diagnostic modalities at hand such as sonography, computed tomography, MRI and other modalities. Laparoscopy has been used in such cases since a long time as a diagnostic tool. The present study evaluates the role of diagnostic laparoscopy in common abdominal diseases at our institute and compares the results with some international studies.

In the present study, laparoscopy was performed for the diagnosis in 27 patients requiring evaluation by this method between January 2012 to February 2013 at the department of surgery SS institute of medical sciences, davanagere.

Out of 27 patients, 17 patients had acute abdominal pain and 5 had chronic pain in the abdomen, 2 had intra-abdominal malignancy and 3 patients had abdominal trauma. Laparoscopy was found to have 100% accuracy in diagnosing acute abdominal pain and in abdominal trauma, 80% in chronic abdominal pain and 50% in patients with intra- abdominal malignancies.

Although a small study, it proves that laparoscopy as a diagnostic modality is an effective tool to diagnose abdominal pathologies especially acute and chronic abdominal pain and abdominal trauma. A significant fraction of patients will be spared of the potential complications of negative exploratory laparotomies.