ABSTRACT
More than 3,500 years ago, autopsy studies in Egypt and China provided the earliest reports of gallstones.1 Remarkably, the first successful cholecystectomy was not performed until 1882, by Carl Langenbuch at the Lazarus Krankenhaus in Berlin, Germany.2 In England at the beginning of the twentieth century, the surgical profession hesitated to diagnose a patient with gallstones unless the patient was jaundiced. Laparoscopic cholecystectomy revolutionized surgical treatment of the gallbladder less than 100 years later, resulting in cholecystectomy becoming the most common elective abdominal surgical procedure performed in the United States and much of the developed world. At a cost of more than $6 billion USD annually, gallbladder disease constitutes a significant health burden for the United States.
