Björnsson B, et al. - Researchers sought to compare short‐term surgical outcomes following laparoscopic distal pancreatectomy (LDP) and open distal pancreatectomy (ODP) with the hypothesis that hospital stay would shorten with performing laparoscopy in patients undergoing standard distal pancreatectomy. In this unblinded, parallel‐group, single‐center superiority trial, prospective randomization to LDP or ODP was done of consecutive patients evaluated at a multidisciplinary tumour board and planned for standard distal pancreatectomy. They performed screening of 105 patients; of these, randomization of 60 was done. Inclusion of 58 (24 women, 41 per cent) was done in the intention‐to‐treat analysis; 29 patients of mean age 68 years underwent LDP and 29 of mean age 63 years underwent ODP. Outcomes revealed shorter hospital stay in correlation with LDP vs ODP, with shorter time to functional recovery and less bleeding.