Introduction: Laparoscopic cholecys-tectomy with general anesthesia is very common. According to the risks of general anesthesia and its effects on respiratory indices, epidural anesthesia as a safe substitute is used instead of general anesthesia in laparoscopic cholecystectomy patients. This study has been conducted to compare respiratory effects of these two methods of anesthesia on respiratory indices in laparoscopic cholecystectomy patients.

Materials & methods: This study is randomized clinical trial (equivalent study) that has been performed in two groups of laparoscopic cholecystectomy patients anesthesized either by general anesthesia method or epidural method. In both groups respiratory indices were measured before, during and after the surgery and then compared and analyzed using SPSS version 20.

Findings: PaO2, SpO2 and PaCO2were lower in general anesthesia group than the epidural group (P<0.005) intraop-eratively. However after surgery there were no differences between the two groups (P=0.07). Using variance an-alysis, successive measurements in controlling sex and basic SpO2 in two groups were meaningfully different (p<0.05).

Discussions & conclusions:  Intrao-peratively using epidural method for laparoscopic cholecystectomy patients causes little change in respiratory indices compare to general anesthesia technique, but after surgery there is no such a difference between two groups and according to patient preference and physician each can be used.