Day-only laparoscopic cholecystectomy in 2021

In this issue of the journal is a paper written by Phamet al. describing the experience at Westmead in introducing and sustaining day-only laparoscopic cholecystectomy.1It is interesting to compare the Westmead experience to our own.2 We conducted a randomized trial during 1996–1997 to examine the outcomes of day-stay patients compared to overnight admissions.There were a number of observations that compare well with the Westmead experience. Our failure rate of overnight admission in the day-only group was 18.3% compared to 18.7% during 2018 in the Westmead series. The overall unplanned readmission rate at Flinders of 3.8% was similar to the 2.5% at Westmead. Similarly,our current rate of day-only elective laparoscopic cholecystectomyis 66.6% (2019/20) compared to 73% (2018) at Westmead.