Laparoscopic approach with its several techniques has become the standard method for cholecystectomy over the past decades. As technical instruments have improved and varied, the interest in endoscopic surgery has turned towards minimal invasive single site access surgery with fewer instruments, thus resulting in minimal pain, minimal scarring and better cosmesis.

A systematic literature searching of databases MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Google Scholar was done from 1982 and updated in December 2015. Search terms were “cholecystectomy”, “laparoscopic cholecystectomy”, “four port laparoscopic cholecystectomy”, “single-incision laparoscopic surgery”.

Four-port laparoscopic cholecystectomy was accepted as the “gold standard” in the treatment of patients with cholelithiasis before millennium. Thereafter, two-port laparoscopic cholecystectomy was reported as a novel, safe and rapid method of gallbladder removal in consecutive reports. Single-site laparoscopic cholecystectomy with non-conventional multi-channel port method was first introduced as an alternative to the standard multi-port laparoscopic cholecystectomy in adult patients in the last decade. Success rates of performing conventional four-port laparoscopic cholecystectomy were ranging from 93% to 100% and single site laparoscopic cholecystectomy was ranging from 84% to 100%.

Currently, it has been widely accepted that laparoscopic cholecystectomy is the gold standard for cholecystectomy. Although single site laparoscopic cholecystectomy is becoming more popular with the recent advancements, conventional multiport laparoscopic cholecystectomy is being widely used as the primary treatment modality for the gallbladder removal.