Aim: Considering that laparoscopic procedure is associated with increased resistance to lower-limb venous return and subsequent stasis, with possible implications in terms of thromboembolic complications, the aim of our study was to investigate prospectively the coagulative-fibrinolytic profile, in laparoscopic and open cholecystectomy, in patients randomly alloted to receive or not preoperative heparin.
Methods: We prospectively analyzed 36 patients (20 laparoscopic and 16 open) and we randomly divided the patients in two groups: Group-A (28 patients--16 laparoscopic and 12 open) didn't take any preoperative thromboprophylaxis, Group-B (8 patients--4 laparoscopic and 4 open) took preoperative subcutaneous heparin. We took blood venous samples before surgery, at time 0 and + 30 min., at the end and 1 and 24 hours postoperatively. The following parameters were assessed: prothrombin time, partial thromboplastin time, fibrinogen and D-dimer. We statistically analyzed the differences by ANOVA test.
Results: In Group A, fibrinogen and D-dimer were significantly higher (p < 0.0001 and p = 0.0266) in open group as compared with laparoscopic one and we observed significant time-depending changes of fibrinogen's concentration (p = 0.0168). In Group B we obtained a higher fibrinogen's value in laparoscopic group than in conventional one, with a significant difference (p = 0.0283); also, the sampling-time affected the result in a very significant meaning (p = 0.0041). Comparing fibrinogen levels between Groups A and B, we observed lower values in heparin-treated group than in the other one (p < 0.0001), while in laparoscopic surgery there was not a significant difference between two groups of treatment.
Conclusions: Our preliminary data suggest that, perioperatively (besides a smaller laparoscopic acute-phase response) the coagulative-fibrinolytic changes are lower in laparoscopic cholecystectomy than in open one and heparin treatment significantly reduces these changes in open surgery but doesn't seem to affect laparoscopic group. Our results seem to show another possible advantage of the laparoscopic surgical procedures over the traditional ones.