Laparoscopic tubal surgery. A retrospective comparative study of open microsurgery versus laparoscopic surgery.

The aim of this study is to compare retrospectively the outcome of patients that underwent tubal surgery by laparotomy or laparoscopy by the same surgeon Thirty two women that presented with distal tubal obstruction were treated by laparoscopic tubal surgery and 38 by laparotomy and microsurgery. Patients were equally matched for age, duration of infertility and severity of disease. In all cases there were no injuries to adjacent groups and no additional surgery was needed. The duration of surgery was 35-60 min for laparoscopy and 70-120 min for laparotomy and mean duration of hospital stay was 2 and 7 days respectively. Of the 32 cases that underwent laparoscopic surgery 10 had intrauterine pregnancies (31.25%) and 2 ectopic (6.2%). Conversely 11 (28.9%) of the 38 cases with tubal microsurgery resulted in intrauterine pregnancy and 4 (10.5%) in ectopic. Our results suggest that laparoscopic tubal surgery is the method of choice for the treatment of distal tubal obstruction.