Despite many documented benefits of laparoscopic colectomy, the technique has not taken hold in surgical practice as laparoscopic cholecystectomy did in the 1990s.
A major barrier to adoption is that not every colectomy can or should be done laparoscopically. “There are patients for which the laparoscopic procedure wouldn’t be appropriate or possible,” said Julie Thacker, MD, associate professor of medicine in the Department of Surgery, Duke University School