Rouvière’s Sulcus as a Landmark for a Safe Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy: An Interim Analysis of a Multicenter Cross-sectional Study on the Prevalence and Morphologic Type of Rouvière’s Sulcus in the Italian Population

Laparoscopic cholecystectomy is the gold standard in the treatment of symptomatic gallstones. The large number of gallbladders removed every year is not fully consistent with the excessively high incidence of iatrogenic bile duct injury (IBDI). Several strategies have been suggested to reduce this risk. Among them, the use of extra biliary anatomic structures, such as the Rouvière’s sulcus, as a landmark to guide the surgeon during dissection has been proposed as a means to prevent IBDI. The main aim of the present paper is the evaluation of the prevalence of Rouvière’s sulcus (RS) and its anatomic variants in a given population.