Purpose: The instrument crowding derived from commercially available access devices in single-incision laparoscopic surgery (SILS) is a challenge to overcome. This study was designed to evaluate the short-term surgical outcomes of SILS by applying a self-made device in patients with benign colon diseases.
Patients and methods: We collected and reviewed the medical records of patients who received SILC by using a self-made glove-port system from March 2007 to July 2012. All operations were performed by a single surgeon. Sixty-four patients (36 males and 28 females) were enrolled for this study. Among them, 15 patients received right-side colon resection, 31 patients received left-side colon resection, and 18 patients received total colectomy.
Results: In the analysis of medical records from these groups of patients, we found that there was no significant difference of gender, body mass index, tumor size, incision length, and blood loss among these three groups. Furthermore, no significant difference of the pain scores, average length of hospital stay, and average duration of bowel return was observed among these three groups. However, it was notable that younger age, longer duration of operation, and longer bowel resection were indeed significantly found in the patients undergoing total colectomy. On the other hand, curved instruments were used in 5 (16.1%) of 31 patients with left-side colon resection.
Conclusions: A simple self-made glove-port device was proven as a practical method of SILS for colorectal diseases. These findings suggested that single-incision laparoscopic total colectomy provides compatible clinical outcome in the patients with benign colon diseases compared with the other two surgical procedures used in this study.