Pediatric Laparoscopic Surgery: Experience of Mother and Child Hospital of Bingerville

Introduction: The goal of our study was to report on our experience of laparoscopic surgery at the Mother and Child Hospital of Bingerville. Patients and Methods: This was a 6-year retrospective study (October 2018 to October 2024), performed in the pediatric surgery department. We had included all patients operated on laparoscopically. The parameters studied were age, gender, preoperative diagnosis, operative procedure performed, postoperative complications and length of stay. Results: We enrolled 108 patients with an average age of 8.71 years (from 09 months to 17 years), 78 of them were male and 30 females. The pathologies concerned were: Simple acute appendicitis (26 cases) and its progressive forms (08 cases), cryptorchidism (non-palpable testicles) (32 cases), caustic esophageal strictures (10 cases), inguinal hernias (4 cases), ovarian cysts (4 cases), Hirschsprung’s disease (10 cases), vesicular lithiasis (10 cases), idiopathic megaesophagus (1 case), hiatal hernia (1 case) and non-functioning kidneys (junction syndrome) (02 cases). We performed 32 exploratory laparoscopies and 108 operative laparoscopies. We noted 2 cases of repeat surgery (cryptorchidism) and 4 cases of conversion to laparotomy (appendicular abscess, pelviperitonitis, ovarian cyst). No post-operative complications were observed. The average length of stay was 3.2 days (0 to 17 days). Conclusion: Our laparoscopic activity was dominated by appendectomy and orchidopexy. The acquisition of equipment adapted to children would enable us to broaden our indications.