Complications of laparoscopy-operative and diagnostic

Objective: To assess the characteristics and rates of complications for operative laparoscopy and diagnostic laparoscopy. Design: Retrospective review. Setting: Tertiary-care university hospital. Patients: Two thousand three hundred twenty-four patients undergoing operative laparoscopy or diagnostic laparoscopy. Interventions: Operative laparoscopy including lysis of adhesions, tubal surgery, ovarian surgery, uterine surgery, or destruction of endometriosis. Main Outcome Measures: Complication rates for operative and diagnostic laparoscopies were tabulated and compared. Results: The overall major complication rate for this series of 2,324 laparoscopies was 0.22%. There were five major and 15 minor complications. In the operative laparoscopy group, there were more complications from Veress needle and trocar insertion (n = 15) than from the actual operative procedures (n = 3). There were more total complications in the operative laparoscopy group (n = 18) than in the diagnostic laparoscopy group (n = 3). Conclusion: Operative laparoscopy is efficacious for a variety of gynecologic surgical procedures.