Since its introduction, laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) has become the treatment of choice for symptomatic gallbladder disease. Although the operation itself has remained essentially unchanged since its introduction, there has been significant evolution in the manner in which patients undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy are managed. In its early application, all patients were hospitalized overnight following the procedure. Recently there has been a shift from hospital admission to the use of "short-stay units" or "23-hour admissions," in hope of providing an economic advantage to the laparoscopic approach.

Many studies have documented the safety and feasibility of day care LC in an ambulatory surgery unit in selected patients. These, however, emanate from countries with hospitals that have dedicated ambulatory surgery units and have well-established norms and protocols for day care surgery. The results of this day care laparoscopic cholecystectomy are promising in the developed nations, but performing laparoscopic cholecystectomy on an outpatient basis is not generally accepted in the developing nations, due to lack of equipped day care centres and transport problems

Health authorities, quality assurance agencies, and surgeons in developing countries have traditionally been reluctant to advocate outpatient surgery because of major resource variations and inequity in quality of health care delivery. Consequently, there has been little or no attempt to study the feasibility and safety of outpatient LC in these countries. This study has been designed to develop outpatient LC in a tertiary health care hospital of a developing country without a free standing facility or department for day care surgery.