Laparoscopic surgery for inflammatory bowel diseases.

Since the introduction of laparoscopy into colorectal surgery in the early 1990s, almost every procedure was attempted laparoscopically. Performing laparoscopic colectomies in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) might prove to be extremely challenging due to the inflammatory features of the diseases and the potential complications they may pose; dealing with inflammatory masses, fistulas and abscesses, short and thick mesentery, friable bowel wall, and the need to operate in all the abdominal quadrants, mobilizing long segments of large and small bowel and controlling multiple large blood vessels is not an easy task. Consequently, many very experienced surgical groups conducted numerous trials in an attempt to determine whether laparoscopy in IBD is indeed beneficial or not. The focus of this review is minimally invasive procedures in patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's disease (CD).