Minimally invasive surgery is a new approach to surgery that is getting patients out of the hospital earlier. They have less pain, the costs are lower, and they can get back to their lives sooner. Minimally invasive is also referred to as laparoscopy, and endoscopy.

This new type of surgery doesn't require a large incision. The surgeon can operate through 3 or 4 tiny cuts while watching it all on a TV monitor. These slits are no bigger than a button hole.

This is the best kind of surgery to have because there is less trauma and much less pain. The healing time is quicker and of course, scarring is at a minimum. With the great skills of the surgeons and the advances of the technology, this type of minimally invasive surgery, is taking off like hot cakes. Gall bladder surgery, is one of the procedures that this type of surgery is used.

One surprising factor is that laparoscopy is not a new procedure. It dates back to 400 B.C. when Hippocrates, the father of medicine was around. In the 1970's gynecologic surgeons began using this technique to perform female sterilization's, known as tubal ligations. Then it was discovered in 1989 that this would be the perfect minimally invasive surgery to do on gall bladder patients. Now it is the most widely used procedure in surgery since anesthesia.

Rather then cutting a 6 to 9 inch incision, the surgeon only needs to cut 4 tiny cuts. It used to be that your stay in the hospital, could be as long as 5 to 8 days, now it is only a day or two, big difference. Today 95% of the more than 600,000 gallbladder surgeries, are done through minimally invasive surgery.

So, you want to know if it is safe, most differently. There have been tons of studies regarding minimally invasive surgery, and the answer is always yes. The National Institutes of Health had a panel of experts review all the available medical evidence. They compared the results of more than 100,000 minimally invasive surgery cases with more than 200,000 cases of traditional gallbladder removal. They found minimally invasive surgery to be equally as safe and effective, and in some cases even safer and more effective than traditional open surgery.