Laparoscopy

Laparoscopy is commonly called ‘keyhole surgery‘. It is a procedure in which a surgical telescope and video camera is passed through a small cut ‘keyhole‘ in the abdomen, usually in the umbilicus (belly button).

Carbon dioxide gas is used to gently inflate your abdomen during laparoscopy to enable your gynaecologist to see tour pelvic organs. This allows your gynaecologist to look at, and operate on, the organs of the pelvis and abdomen. Instruments can be passed through one or more other small cuts in the wall of the abdomen.

The cuts are usually about a centimetre long so the gynaecologist can perform operations without the need for a large cut.

Laparoscopy and keyhole surgical techniques give patients a number of important advantages:

• more rapid recovery

• reduced pain

• smaller scars