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FEBRUARY 11, 2016

When a Good Lap Chole Turns Bad

The Surgical Approach to Severe Cholecystitis: Is It Time for an Overhaul?

By Sharmila Dissanaike, MD, and Adnan Alseidi, MD

What could possibly be left to talk about in gallbladder surgery? Since Langenbuch’s cholecystectomy proved superior to the previously popular method of cholecystostomy, removal of stones and drainage (the procedure famously performed by William Halsted on his own mother on a kitchen table in 1882), very little has fundamentally changed in our anatomic approach to the gallbladder.

Obviously, the 1990s saw a seismic shift in how this