Laparoscopic hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery: my trials and current status in Korea

There has been a dramatic change in surgical care over the past 30 years with the introduction of laparoscopic surgery. It was my great fortune that I could experience laparoscopic surgery during my resident training period. After beginning to work for my hospital in 1995, I tried laparoscopic surgery in many surgical fields, including hepatobiliary and pancreatic (HBP), colon, stomach, and vascular surgery (endoscopic saphenous vein harvesting, endoscopic subfascial perforating vein interruption to treat skin complications in patients with deep vein insufficiency in the lower leg). In Sabiston, Textbook of Surgery, published in 1997, laparoscopic Whipple and major liver resection were not accepted at the time but now are. There are three possible reasons that may explain this shift. The first one is the 30 years of experience using advanced techniques; all of us know that “Seeing is believing,” and “A thousand hearings are not worth one seeing.” Next is the availability of three-dimensional imaging with magnification which enables us to perform difficult surgeries. The last one is the use of good instruments and an advanced surgical platform. In this paper, I would like to share my past and recent trials with advanced HBP laparoscopic surgery, as well as its current status in Korea and future directions.