Supervised surgical training and its effect on the short-term outcome in laparoscopic colorectal surgery

Aim: Laparoscopic colorectal surgery requires supervised training. In this paper we examine the short-term outcome following a component-based training in laparoscopic colorectal surgery. Method: Surgical outcome following laparoscopic colorectal resection was recorded on a prospective database. Patients were divided into three groups, including those performed by the fellows, those completed by the consultant and those completed by a combination of both. Analysis of data was carried out for all colorectal resections and the subgroup with colorectal cancer. Results: 511 operations were examined between June 2006 and January 2011. There was no statistically significant difference in operating time between fellows and consultants but it was significantly longer for procedures where consultants and fellows performed components. Conversion rate, postoperative morbidity, recovery and length of stay were similar for all three groups for the whole patient cohort and also the subgroup of cancer patients. In the cancer subgroup, there was no difference in the pathological stage in the three groups. Conclusion: Closely supervised training in laparoscopic colorectal surgery is not associated with any adverse effect on the short-term outcome.