Minimally Invasive Surgery: Surgery with Less Pain

Robert J. McCarthy, DVM, MS, DACVS    

“I learned a long time ago that minor surgery is when they do the operation on someone else, not you”              

-Bill Walton of the Boston Celtics              

Philippe Bozzini, father of minimally invasive surgery, described in the early 1800s an examination with a "lichtleiter." (Image courtesy laparoscopy.com)

History and Rationale

 Although still in its infancy in veterinary medicine, minimally invasive surgery (MIS) has been performed in humans since the early 1800′s, when Bozzini described examination of the bladder and rectum with an instrument referred to as a “lichtleiter”. . While initially used sparingly, and only as a diagnostic tool, operative MIS gained explosive popularity after description of the first laparoscopic cholecystectomy in 1985. It is estimated that a staggering 600,000 laparoscopic cholecystectomies are now performed annually in the United States alone! MIS has now been investigated as an option to replace almost every imaginable open surgical procedure in humans.              

Colleagues have argued to me that if you add up the length of all the stab wounds for a MIS procedure, they could do the same intervention through an open approach. The lack of understanding is that it is not the total length of the incision that causes the trauma, but rather Continue reading →