Competence Acquisition for Single-Incision

Background and Objectives: Within the past few years, there has been a push for an even more minimally inva-sive approach to biliary disease with the adoption of single-incision laparoscopic cholecystectomy. We sought to compare 4 individual surgeon experiences to define whether there exists a learning curve for performing sin-gle-incision laparoscopic cholecystectomy. Methods: We performed a retrospective review 290 sin-gle-incision laparoscopic cholecystectomies performed by a group of general surgeons, with varying levels of expe-rience and training, at 3 institutions between May 2008 and September 2010. The procedure times were recorded for each single-incision laparoscopic cholecystectomy, or-dered chronologically for each surgeon, and subsequentl