Patients with inflammatory bowel disease, especially Crohn’s disease (CD), have a relatively high rate of surgery during their lifetime. In recent years, with the rapid development of laparoscopic surgery, its application in the field of IBD has also started. However, it has been questioned because patients with IBD usually have thickened intestinal wall and mesentery, brittle texture, often with inflammatory pouch, fistula and abscess, in addition to risk factors such as malnutrition, hormone application, and adhesions from previous surgeries, which cause concern among doctors and patients about laparoscopic surgery. However, laparoscopic surgery has many theoretical advantages over traditional open surgery in patients with IBD: 1. Patients are usually young and socially active, and it is very important for them to return to normal life as soon as possible and to have an aesthetically pleasing surgical incision; 2. The relatively few adhesions caused by laparoscopy reduce the difficulty of reoperation, whereas patients with CD often have the possibility of multiple surgeries; 3. The reduction of pelvic adhesions can reduce incidence of postoperative infertility in women of childbearing age; 4. The short-term advantages of laparoscopic surgery observed in areas such as malignancy and diverticulitis can also be seen in patients with IBD; 5. Laparoscopic surgery may reduce the risk of small bowel obstruction and long-term complications such as incisional hernia. Previous meta-analyses and randomized controlled studies have found that laparoscopic ileal resection in patients with CD is safe and does not increase postoperative complications, but rather reduces postoperative bowel obstruction and shortens the length of hospital stay. Similarly, the advantages of laparoscopy have been demonstrated in subtotal colectomy for ulcerative colitis (UC) and in ileal pouch-anal anastomosis (IPAA). A recent study from France that included 633 patients with IBD over a 14-year period found that the rate of conversion to open surgery and the rate of serious postoperative complications decreased significantly with increasing laparoscopic experience, as published in the Annals of Surgery, a leading journal of surgery. A total of 790 procedures were performed in the study, of which 574 (73%) were laparoscopic, including 286 (48%) ileal resections, 118 (19%) subtotal colectomies, 134 (21%) IPAA procedures, 23 (8%) partial colectomies, and 18 (4%) combined abdominoperineal resections. Of these, 145 (25%) were complex laparoscopic procedures, including 66 patients with repeat abdominal surgery and 93 patients with abdominal abscesses and fistulas. The rate of conversion to open laparotomy was 12% (67 cases), with one postoperative death (0.2%) and 66 cases (13%) with serious complications. A comparison of the five phases in chronological order showed that the proportion of laparoscopic procedures increased from 42% at the beginning of the study to 80% at the end of the study; moreover, the proportion of complex laparoscopic procedures increased significantly, and the proportion of intermediate open procedures and the proportion of serious postoperative complications decreased significantly. Therefore, the authors of this study concluded that laparoscopic surgery is expected to become the “gold standard” for IBD surgery in the future.