Complications of minimally invasive surgery in companion animals.

Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) has become increasingly popular in recent years for diagnosis and treatment of an ever-expanding list of disease processes in small animal patients. Reports in the veterinary literature have documented a large number of MIS alternatives to traditional open surgery albeit mostly in small cohorts of patients. Advantages of MIS have been documented by many investigators and include significant decreases in postoperative pain, length of hospital stay, and analgesic requirements, as well as other types of morbidity, with some procedures now being performed on an outpatient basis. However, MIS procedures are not without surgical morbidity and in some cases may be associated with higher levels or different types of complications compared to open surgery.