Tehran University Medical Journal

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Background: Identifying risk factors for conversion to open surgery laparoscopic cholecystectomy and factors are difficult to predict cholecystectomy surgery is required. The aim of this study was to evaluate the findings of preoperative ultrasound in predicting the length of laparoscopic cholecystectomy surgery.
Methods: The present study was performed cross-sectional on 122 patients who underwent laparoscopic cholecystectomy in Shahid Beheshti, Forghani and Nekoei’s Hospital in Qom from September 2016 to September 2017.
Inclusion criteria: All cases of acute cholecystitis, chronic cholecystitis, symptomatic gallstones and biliary pancreatitis underwent laparoscopic cholecystectomy. The exclusion criteria included patients undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy at the same time were other procedures. Before surgery patients' information such as age, sex, ultrasound findings including gallbladder wall thickness, compressed stone and the presence of fluid around the gallbladder were recorded in the checklist. Finally, the duration of cholecystectomy was divided into two degrees of easy operation (less than 60 minutes and without complications) and difficult operation (above 60 minutes with complications) according to the mentioned variables. Data were analyzed by SPSS software, version 22 (IBM SPSS, Armonk, NY, USA). In this study, a significance level of less than 0.05 was considered.

Results: 28 (22.4 percent) males and 97 (77.6 percent) females with a mean age of 44.66 13 13.85 years were studied. There were 35 difficult cases (28 percent) and 90 easy cases (72 percent). Conversion to open surgery occurred in three cases. Among the sonographic findings, there was a significant relationship between the increase in gallbladder wall thickness and Impacted stone with the duration of operation (P≤0.05). But no significant relationship was found between the findings of Presence of pericholecystic fluid and the duration of operation (P>0.05). Conclusion: Overall, the findings of this study showed that preoperative ultrasound is able to provide valuable data in predicting the duration of laparoscopic cholecystectomy.

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Background: Knowing the conversion risk factors of laparoscopic cholecystectomy to open surgery, helps the surgeon to plan for surgery accordingly. This study aimed to determine the risk factors for converting laparoscopic cholecystectomy to open surgery.
Methods: In this analytical study, the case information of 1104 patients who underwent laparoscopic cholecystectomy in Shahid Beheshti Hospital in Qom from April 2013 to April 2017 was evaluated. Inclusion criteria were all cases of acute cholecystitis, chronic cholecystitis, symptomatic gallstones, and biliary pancreatitis who underwent laparoscopic cholecystectomy. The exclusion criteria were patients who underwent laparoscopic cholecystectomy at the same time with other procedures. Data of all patients including age, sex, history of abdominal surgery, emergency or elective surgery, blood transaminase level, blood bilirubin level, white blood cell count, amylase level, and serum alkaline phosphatase were recorded. Finally, potential risk factors were compared between the two groups. Average, standard deviation, frequency and percentage indices were used to describe the data. Independent samples t‐test and Mann-Whitney U test were used for quantitative data analysis and Chi-square test was used for qualitative data analysis. P<0.05 is considered significant.
Results: 1104 patients were studied. 765 patients were female (69.3%) and 339 patients were male (30.7%). In 104 cases, open surgery was performed. The mean age of patients in the method change group was 49.45±8.9 years. Among the studied variables, between sex (P=0.26), age (P=0.056), process of cholecystitis (P=0.65), previous history of abdominal surgery (P=0.62), alanine transaminase (P=0.10) aspartate transaminase (P=0.95) showed no statistically significant relationship with the conversion of laparoscopic surgery to open surgery. However, abnormal ultrasound (P=0.000), emergency surgery (P=0.000), white blood cell count (P=0.008), total bilirubin and alkaline phosphatase (P=0.000) had a statistically significant relationship with the conversion of laparoscopic to open surgery

Conclusion: Due to the high complications and mortality of open cholecystectomy, the detection of these risk factors helps to reduce the rate of open surgery and address these factors before surgery.