The carbon footprint of laparoscopic surgery: should we offset?

The aim of this study was to estimate the effect that the expansion of laparoscopic surgery has had on global warming. Laparoscopic procedures performed in a hospital over a 10-year period were analysed. The number of CO(2) cylinders (size C) used over a 2.5-year period and the "carbon footprint" of each cylinder was calculated. There was a fourfold increase of in the number of laparoscopic procedures performed over the past 10 years (n = 174-688). Median operative time for the laparoscopic procedures performed over the past 2.5-years (n = 1629) was 1.01 h (range 0.3-4.45 h) with 415 cylinders used in this period giving an operative time per cylinder of 3.96 h. Each cylinder produces only 0.0009 of tonnes of CO(2). Despite increasing frequency of the laparoscopic approach in general surgery, its impact on global warming is negligible.