Value of tonometry in postoperative high risk patients with digestive surgery

Intramucosal pH (pHi) in splanchnic organs is a reliable index of local tissular perfusion, and can be measured by tonometry. At the Surgical Intensive Care Unit we used tonometry to determine tissular perfusion in patients who underwent major digestive surgery. We report a prospective study of 20 patients with elective and emergency surgery. All of them underwent gastric tonometry and 10 of them, who had colonic disease, also underwent sigmoid tonometry. The values below pHi = 7.30 were associated with increased morbidity and mortality.