Role of Laparoscopy in Gastrointestinal Tumors

Cancer is a major public health problem worldwide. Many studies have shown that the completion of adjuvant chemotherapy improves the survival rate. A significant percentage of intra-abdominal cancers prove to be inoperable because of metastatic or locally advanced disease despite a preoperative workup suggesting a potentially resectable disease. Historically, these patients would have undergone morbid negative laparotomies with associated complications and the resultant delay in the initiation of adjuvant or palliative chemotherapy. Diagnostic laparoscopy for accurate staging of intra-abdominal malignancies is referred to as staging laparoscopy and is performed as a standard part of the staging workup for an increasing number of cancer subtypes. Staging laparoscopy (SL) may aid in the more accurate staging of digestive cancers, offering guidelines for the most appropriate treatment and avoiding the morbidity associated with non-therapeutic laparotomy the procedure enables the direct inspection of intra-abdominal organs and facilitates obtaining biopsy specimens and aspiration cytology. In some patients, the therapeutic intervention can be performed through a laparoscopic approach.