Despite enthusiasm and advantages for these techniques, laparoscopic colorectal surgery is difcult. This single issue probably accounts for the fact that a large por­tion of colorectal surgery is still performed using open techniques [9]. Furthermore, while laparoscopic and open techniques are oncologically equivalent, in major tri­als, laparoscopic operations were longer than the open operations and the conver­sion rates to open surgery were not insignicant [1–4]. In this setting, hand-assisted laparoscopic surgery (HALS) for colorectal pathology was developed. Initially, HALS was considered an intermediate technique designed to help surgeons quickly gain experience and surmount the long learning curve of laparoscopy. Moreover, HALS could be applied to cases not progressing with straight laparoscopy to avoid conversion to a full laparotomy. With better hand-assisted devices, it became clear that HALS had some innate advantages over pure laparoscopic techniques that could make widespread adoption of these techniques a reasonable alternative while preserving the typical benets of minimally invasive operations. As it stands, there have been no studies that show any short-term benets of pure laparoscopic colorec­tal surgery over HALS, and in most reports the HALS approach saves time in the operating room and dramatically decreases conversion rates. All this while offering the surgeon the advantages of tactile feedback and multipoint retraction, one could only get using the most advanced, gentle, and sophisticated surgical instrument: the human hand.