Anyone had Laporatomy surgery rather than Laproscopic?

[Rebecca76]

I am considering surgery, but I cannot have laproscopic surgery. I was wondering if anyone had any of the surgeries via laporatomy and what their experience was like for recovery?

[jillybean720]

A quick Google leads me to believe a laparotomy procedure is essentially what most would call "open" as opposed to laparoscopic. This happens in WLS for lots of folks for various reasons, including liver too enlarged to navigate around laparoscopically, too much abdominal fat making the laparoscopic tools too short to reach everything as needed, too much scar tissue from prior operations in the way of navigating laparoscopically, etc. And some surgeons just plain prefer NOT to perform procedures laparoscopically because they feel they don't get to see or maneuver as well as with an open incision.

My surgery was performed laparoscopically, but I would have gone open if there was any reason to do so. The major difference will simply be additional time for the incision to heal after the surgery and a slight increased risk of incisional infection due to having a larger incision.

[Rebecca76]

Thank you Jill. I already know I can't have laproscopic surgery, which I was told was the norm, due to having a lot of scar tissue from other emergency surgeries. I was just kind of wondering about the down time. My other surgeries have been about 5-6 weeks each out of work.