Abstract
Background and Aims
The “Open Abdomen” technique for difficult conditions such as trauma, necrotizing pancreatitis, severe peritonitis, reoperations and transplantations have become a very useful way to save patients. The more severe complication of this method are the enteroatmospheric fistulae with a frequency of 5–75% and a mortality up to 42%. So any effort to prevent these is very essential. The aim of this paper is to present methods of the initial (temporary) closure of the abdomen for the prevention of this catastrophe, when early approximation of the abdominal wall is not feasible.
Methods and Materials
We present two representative case reports and we describe the use of full thickness or split skin grafts as first step for abdominal closure.
Results and Conclusions
The outcome of our patients by using tissues for temporary abdominal closure seems to have fewer problems than other methods with synthetic materials. We think that this is a reasonable option for the cases where we cannot achieve approximation of the abdominal wall edges in the early days of an open abdomen.
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Informed Consent
The authors declare that the study has been performed in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki.
Also all patients gave their written informed consent prior to their inclusion to the study.
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The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
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Voros, D., Anastasopoulos, G., Sarris, G. et al. Prevention of Entero-Atmospheric Fistula: The Initial Closure of the Abdomen. Hellenic J Surg 92, 208–210 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13126-020-0580-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13126-020-0580-5