[Echography in minimally invasive surgery]

Thanks to the great development of laparoscopic surgery and his continuous technical evolution, echography plays more and more important role in the pre- and intraoperative diagnosis. In the hepato-pancreatic pathology the use of the laparoscopic echography reduces clearly the role of laparotomic exploration. In laparoscopic surgery of rectal-colon, the echography is more specific and sensitive in compared with pre-operative MR and CT to individualize liver metastasis, to locate them. This allows the treatment of such lesions through the cryosurgery. In pancreatic lesions such method plays a non releasable role in tumors staging, giving essential elements to the surgeon to operate and for a better definition of operative strategy. Also in the adrenal masses surgery, laparoscopic echography reveals very useful especially in the anatomical structures identification (i.e. renal vein and entrance of the left adrenal vein) in the patients already operated or obese. In the preoperative study of rectal tumors the use of rotating and transrectal probes allows to define the degree of infiltration of the lesion and to perform a mini-invasive treatment through endoscopic transanal microsurgery with the radiochemotherapy. Thus echography in mini-invasive surgery has an unreplaceable role both in diagnosis as in evaluation of the parameter of therapeutical approach.