What does a laparoscopic splenectomy involve?
Laparoscopy is a means of vision. Rather than making a large incision and looking directly into your abdomen, we make small incisions of 5 to 10 mm (1/5 to 2/5 inches) and use a telescope to see inside your abdomen. The scope is attached to a camera that lets us operate while watching on a television screen. The actual operation is done the same way but rather than using a 6 to 8 inch incision as for open surgery, we use five small incisions in laparoscopic surgery: two that are 5 mm (1/5 of inch) and three that are 10 mm (2/5 of inch). We then pass tubes through these incisions to allow access into your abdomen and we expand your abdomen with carbon dioxide gas to provide us a space to work in. Our hands never enter your abdomen. Instead, we use long instruments to perform the surgery that we pass through the small tubes. One might compare laparoscopic surgery to open surgery like eating with chop sticks as compared to a knife and fork! How does my spleen come out those small incision
