Prevention of posttraumatic intra-abdominal infections

GAO Jin-mou

Abstract：Posttraumatic intra-abdominal infections are the main cause for abdominal trauma patients mor-tality at late stage.Prevention of these complications is the key to increase the survival .The measures are as fol-lows:conducting early diagnosis and timely surgical intervention to shorten intra -abdominal contamination;standardi-zing surgical technique and appropriately selecting surgical procedure according to the classification of organ injury ;avoiding miss-diagnosis and performing preventive surgical procedure for severe gastrointestinal contusion during ini -tial laparotomy;thoroughly irrigating abdominal cavity;reasonably using drainage;correctly performing damage con-trol surgeries including temporary reconstruction while open abdomen being done ,removal of packing and timely per-formance of definitive procedure;and applying prophylactic systemic and topical antimicrobials .Besides,special at-tention should be given to the gut-origin infection following hemorrhagic shock .Preventive measures include correct-ly performing damage control resuscitation to avoid prolonged hypo-perfusion of organs ,conducting early enteral nu-trition and applying prophylactic antimicrobials .