The Abdominal Compartment Syndrome

Abstract

At Thanksgiving — a national holiday here in the USA — many millions of Turkeys — also called “Thanksgivings Birds” — are tightly stuffed with various sorts of ingredients and served to the craving mouths of meat-loving Americans. Mind, however, that these large birds are stuffed postmortem, not before. Imagine what would have happen to the poor bird, if tightly stuffed — into her abdomen, and alive — with your favorite sort of stuffing (mine would include chickpeas, garlic, wine-soaked bread, and thyme). First, the bird would stop flying and then gradually it would hypoventilate, collapse and die. Surely, you could attribute the death of the stuffed avis to bad lungs, old heart, toxins produced by the ingredients used in the stuffing and as always — you could blame the anesthetist. But frankly, there is a huge body of first grade scientific evidence, to prove beyond any doubt that the tragic outcome of your bird resulted from elevation of her intra-abdominal pressure (IAP),causing intra-abdominal hypertension (IAHT) which in turn leads to the abdominal compartment syndrome (ACS).

In surgery physiology is the king, anatomy the queen;

you can be the prince, but only provided you have the judgement...