18. Laparoscopic assisted cryosurgery for intra abdominal malignancy

Cryotherapy for cancer was first reported by James Arnott in England in 1850. But the widespread of the clinical applications started more than one century later along with the development of better instrumentation for cryosurgery, especially also due to the significant improvement of imaging techniques. Beside the open surgical procedure, recently the application of cryosurgery to organs inside the body can also be done percutaneously or with laparoscopic technique as a minimally invasive approach. Compared to the open surgical approach, the laparoscopic technique shows some advantages, namely: less pain, faster recovery, lower surgical site infections, better cosmetic results and also as an excellent diagnostic tool. This technique has gained increasingly more acceptance to replace the open approach in many surgical procedures including cryosurgery, known as laparoscopic assisted cryosurgery. It has been applied for malignancy in liver, kidney and other intra abdominal solid organs with the advantages of the minimally invasive techniques and also improving the diagnostic, and better monitoring of the process for the effectiveness and safety during the cryosurgery procedure.