[Emergency laparoscopy. A 20-year experience]

We revised 7988 laparoscopies over twenty years. Three hundred and ninety three were urgent laparoscopies: 325 patients with acute spontaneous abdomen and 68 acute traumatic abdomen. Emergency laparoscopy is made in patients with, both spontaneous and traumatic acute abdomen, when diagnosis is not made in 8 hours with the usual clinical and imaging methods. Acute diffuse peritonitis was the commonest finding in the first group (21%) and splenic rupture in the traumatic group (34%). There were two severe complications (0.5%): pulmonary oedema in a patient with myocardial disease and a respiratory failure in a old patient, which were resolved. We had two deaths related to laparoscopic diagnosis: massive mesenteric thrombosis and fecal peritonitis. There are few contraindications and tolerance is very good. This study shows a sensitivity of 98%, a specificity of 90%, a predictive positive value greater than 98% and a negative predictive value of 100%. In summary, the present study demonstrates that emergency laparoscopy is a effective diagnostic method in acute abdominal pain of uncertain aetiology.