[Value of immediate operation in acute cholecystitis].

Operations were performed on 221 patients for tentative diagnosis of acute cholecystitis at the Surgical Department of Goslar District Hospital, between January 1982 and August 1986. Evaluation was possible of 179 of these cases. This group was compared with 96 patients who had undergone surgery some time after admission to hospital, between January 1980 and December 1981, with 90 patients of these patients being evaluated. Mortality, postoperative complications, length of surgical sessions, and length of hospitalisation of immediate treated patients were lower than those recorded from patients with delayed operations. Mixed germ cultures were recordable from the former group and monocultures from the latter. On balance, the rate of complications following immediate surgery did not deviate from data given for early surgery in the literature, in that it was below the rate following interval operation. Therefore, immediate surgery in the authors' hospital is considered to be the appropriate approach to acute cholecystitis.