Linderman GC, Lin W, Sanghvi MR, et al. - Laparoscopic surgery seems to improve outcomes in colorectal emergencies in contrast to open surgery. The benefit is observed even after multiple statistical approaches are used to adjust for both measured and unmeasured confounding, implying that the benefit is not due to patient selection.

• Emergency colectomy cases were identified from 2014 to 2018 utilizing data from the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program.

• Of the 21,453 patients who met the criteria, 3,867 underwent laparoscopy, with 1,375 converting to open surgery.

• When compared with open surgery, attempting laparoscopy was associated with lower 30-day mortality, overall morbidity, anastomotic leak, surgical site infection, postoperative septic shock, and length of hospital stay in both inverse probability of treatment weighting and regression analyses.

• Such effects corresponded to the lower bounds calculated from the converted group.