How do the recovery times for people going through open surgery and laparoscopic surgery compare?
In terms of hospital stay, I would say it’s comparable. Usually the laparoscopy patients stay overnight. With open surgery, it may be one or two days. As for the returning back to normal activities, it’s much faster in laparoscopy. I would say the patient would be back to work after laparoscopic surgery within two to three weeks, and that’s mainly because the catheter that drains the bladder is removed very early in laparoscopy compared to open surgery. In laparoscopic surgery, we remove the catheter three to five days after surgery, while in open surgery it takes two to three weeks. In open surgery, you can only aim at stitching the bladder and the urethra together after the prostate is removed because it is a difficult area to see well. In laparascopy, with the magnified image, we can see clearly where we are putting the sutures. As a result, you can put in very precise stitches in a water-tight manner, so that you don’t need the tissue to heal completely before you remove the cathet
