Laparoscopic-Assisted Transanal Pull-Through for Hirschsprung’s Disease

Abstract

Open surgical correction of Hirschsprung’s disease has traditionally been performed in two or three stages. An initial colostomy is performed at diagnosis in order to decompress the dilated bowel proximal to the aganglionic segment. Three to twelve months later, a colon pullthrough is performed after proctectomy. Colostomy closure is performed simultaneously or staged three to six months later [8]. Twenty-five years ago, So and Carcassonne independently reported excellent results with definitive primary pull-through procedures [2,7]. However, a one-stage pull-through did not become popular until the development of minimally invasive techniques for the repair of Hirschsprung’s disease [3]. This chapter describes the endosurgical techniques used by the authors for correcting Hirschsprung’s disease in a single stage.

The online version of the original chapter can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-33935-9_23