comparison of 3-port with standard 4-port laparoscopic cholecystectomy: a clinical trial

Introduction: since the laparoscopic cholecystectomy was introduced first in 1990, the 4port laparoscopic cholecystectomy was the gold standard. the 4port (lateral) is used to hold gall bladder fundus and observe calot’s triangle. it is discussed that the 4port technique is not required in many patients. therefore, this study aimed to make a comparison between 3port and 4port laparoscopic cholecystectomy methods in the treatment of gall stone disease.methods: a double blind clinical trial was performed on patients admitted to imam reza hospital, birjand, iran. the patients with gall stone disease (n=60) were randomly assigned into the case (3port) and control (4port) groups using balanced block randomization and underwent 3 or 4port laparoscopic cholecystectomy. post-operative pain was measured by a visual analog scale four h after surgery. the amount of painkiller, duration of surgery, as well as length of stay and scars were measured in this study. data were analyzed statistically in spss software (version 18) through the chisquare test and ttest. a pvalue less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant.results: the groups were compared in terms of demographic characteristics. there were 24 females (80%) and 6 males (20%) in the control group and 25 females (83.4%) and 5 males (16.7%) in the case group (p=0.739). moreover, the mean ages of the control and case groups were 59.823 and respectively, and there was no significant difference between the groups in this regard (p=0.348). furthermore, length of operation (p=0.001) and analgesic consumption (p=0.001) in the 3port laparoscopic cholecystectomy group were lower than those in the 4port group; however, the hospital stay (p=0.896) was the same in both groups.conclusions: the 3port laparoscopic cholecystectomy is a safe, reliable, and cost effective method in patients who underwent laparoscopic cholecystectomy.