THE IMMUNE RESPONSE OF THE ORGANISM DURING LAPAROSCOPIC AND OPEN CHOLECYSTECTOMY

Abstract

Introduction: Laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) is a method of choice for chronic gallbladder calculus. Surgeon’s experience and sophistication of the work method itself have brought a number of advantages in comparison to open cholecystectomy (OC). Particularly, the advantage corresponds to decreased immune response of the organism on surgical stress. The aim of this study was to define the level of surgical stress through immune response of the organism on stress. Patients and Methods: One hundred patients were involved in the study, 50 of whom were treated by LC method and the other 50 by open method. The patients were of middle age group, between 47 and 57 years of age, mostly female. C-reactive protein was studied as one of the parameters of the organism’s immune response during LC and OC, and also a number of leucocytes, erythrocytes, haemoglobin and hematocrit after LC and OC procedures. C-reactive protein is a biochemical marker, as an organism’s response to stress and the aim of this study is to confirm the CRP values during surgical treatment of chronic calculus of the gallbladder through different surgical methods: conventional or open surgery and laparoscopic surgery which is considered less invasive. Number and frequency of intra-operative and post-operative complications during laparoscopic and open cholecystectomy were also compared. The erythrocytes, haemoglobin and hematocrit and leucocytes, were also determined in both groups of patients with the aim to confirm the hypothesis that the laparoscopic cholecystectomy is a less invasive method compared to the classic or open method. Results and Discussion: The results have confirmed the hypothesis that the laparoscopic cholecystectomy surgical method is less invasive and showed that the value of CRP is much less in post-operative period after LC than OC. In this way, decreased immunological response of the organism on the surgical laparoscopic procedure were confirmed in this study. Decreased value of leucocytes was determined in laparoscopic technique in the post-operative period in comparison to open technique. The number of erythrocytes, hematocrots and haemoglobin were not significantly different in the post-operative period during LC and OC. Complications such as bleeding, bile leakage, subphrenic abscess, post-operative pancreatitis, post-operative wound infection, hernias of post-operative sections and keloid were present more in OC than in LC. Conclusion: Inflammation of early protective homeostatic immune response on post-operative wound characterises the production of C-reactive protein as one of the activities of cellular and humoral mechanisms. This comparative study between laparoscopic and open cholecystectomy in light of immune response of the organism to stress, number and type of intra-operative and post-operative complications, confirmed advantages of laporascopic technique in comparison to open method.