Abstract
Adhesions are bands of tissue that connect organs together. It is frequently reported
after surgery and remains a major problem for health and society. Efforts to prevent
or reduce peritoneal adhesions mostly have been unsuccessful, hindered by their empirical
basis, lack of good predictive animal models and complexity of adhesion pathogenesis.
Although a good surgical technique is a crucial part of adhesion prevention, the technique
alone cannot effectively eliminate the adhesions. Thus, there remains a room for further
research. A comprehensive literature review of published experimental and clinical
studies of adhesion prevention was carried out at the University of Bristol electronic
library (MetaLib®) with cross-search of seven different medical databases (AMED—Allied and Complementary
Medicine Database, BIOSIS Previews on Web of Knowledge, Cochrane Library, Embase and
Medline on Web of Knowledge, OvidSP and PubMed) by using key words (peritoneal adhesions, postoperative adhesions, prevention) to explore the progress in different surgical strategies and adjuvant materials
used to prevent adhesions formation and reformation. By the end of the study, recommendations
formulated for surgeons to be followed during the operations to prevent, as much as possible, the postoperative adhesions.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: February 15, 2010
Accepted:
February 1,
2010
Received in revised form:
December 15,
2009
Received:
August 31,
2009
Identification
Copyright
© 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
