Laparoscopic Surgery - How it is Done and its Benefits

Explore the benefits of Minimally Invasive Laparoscopic Surgery in this video with Dr Eugene Yeo, General and Colorectal Surgeon from TEN Surgery (a member of Healthway Medical) this #colorectalcancer month.

0:05
Hi, my name is Eugene and I'm a general and colorectal surgeon. I have special interest in minimally invasive surgery which includes laparoscopic and robotic surgery.

0:15 What is Laparoscopic Surgery?
When we talk about laparoscopic surgery, I think the first thing we have to understand is what open surgery is. Traditional way of surgery is actually called open surgery where a big cut is made in the abdomen, and this cut allows us to put our hands into the abdomen and with our instruments to do the surgery that's required be it a hernia repair or removing and colon cancer for example.

In laparoscopic surgery, what is done is instead of this big cut, what we use is a small little pot. We blow up the abdomen and use these pots to do the surgery instead of avoiding a large incision.

0:51 What are the advantages of Laparoscopic Surgery?
The advantages of keyhole surgery actually refer to the advantages that we get when we don't have the large wound that is required for an open operation. The advantages of this will include less pain, faster recovery. As a result less hospitals stay and also reduced risk of wound complications such as wound infection and hernias as well.

Studies that have been done actually show that open surgery and laparoscopic surgery have the same long term outcome. Laparoscopic surgery actually has the advantage of faster recovery with all the benefits or rather having the same outcome as open surgery as well. As a result, laparoscopic surgery has actually become standard of care for many of the operations that we do today.

1:34 What instruments are used in Laparoscopic Surgery?
So for laparoscopic surgery, we use many different instruments. However, the key ones that we use mainly firstly, the camera which allows us eyes into the abdomen for us to see wherever we are doing because there's now no big cut.

And of course, other instruments that we use include the same instruments that we use in open surgery except that they're miniaturized. So we have a miniature grasper with a miniature scissors and other instruments that we use for dissection as well.

2:03 In view of its advantages, should all surgeries be done Laparoscopically?
Of course not all surgeries can be done using the laparoscopic method. Sometimes open surgery is still required. For example, in patients with multiple surgeries before or if they have had any emergency surgery that needs to be done or they're not fit enough to do laparoscopic surgery. Sometimes the tumors are so large that we will need a large incision to remove it anyway. So in these patients actually open surgery is required. But of course as much as possible if we can have the advantages of doing laparoscopic surgery we will very much prefer this for our patients.