As a general surgeon in the 1960s, Phillipe Mouret (b. 1938) rotated on a gynecology service during which he had his first contact with laparoscopy. “At that time we used the instruments constructed by Palmer,” notes Mouret. “Since then I have brought my interest in that particular endoscopie technique into surgery.” Mouret shared his surgical practice with a gynecologist and thus had access to both laparoscopic equipment and, importantly, to patients requiring laparoscopy. “I could not understand why surgeons were not using laparoscopy, but still laparotomy. The patients clearly preferred laparoscopy,” stated Mouret in 1994. Mouret was using diagnostic laparoscopy in the 1970s, and, by the early 1980s, was able to sharpen his skills as instruments became more sophisticated. “Originally it [laparoscopy] had a strictly diagnostic purpose,” remarks Mouret, “then it was used to obtain a better topographic overview before operating and finally, a small therapeutic-operative endoscope was developed, to complete endoscopie use.”
According to Mouret, in 1983, unaware of Semm’s efforts, he carried out his first laparoscopic appendectomy (LA). “The first step was to expose the appendix laparoscopically and then to pull it out of the abdomen,” notes Mouret. “After that, I cut it off extracorporeally.” Mouret never attempted to publish his initial work on LA.
Mouret, Dubois, and Perissat: The Laparoscopic Breakthrough in Europe (1987-1988)
