[Laparoscopic surgery in acute abdominal trauma]

In the past few years, laparoscopy has been increasingly used in patients with acute abdominal trauma. This metod in experienced hands enables direct eye visualisation of abdominal cavity, ensures accurate and early diagnosis and leads to prompt decision on the therapy. Reviewing the literature, laparoscopy in acute abdominal trauma is a safe and accurate procedure to yield diagnosis, enable laparoscopic interventions and help avoid unnecessary laparotomy. In acute abdominal trauma, laparoscopy is mostly used as a diagnostic method, not so often as a therapeutic method, but an expanding range of therapeutic interventions is available. We show our early results with diagnostic and therapeutic laparoscopy from January 1st 2003 to March 31st 2004, stressing therapeutic laparoscopy. We performed 79 laparoscopic explorations in patients with diagnosis of acute abdomen. 7 of them were explored because of acute abdominal trauma. In 3 patients there was no need for intervention after laparoscopic exploration, in 1 patient we electrocoagulates smaller bleeding from the spleen and in other 3 patients we made conversion to open surgery procedure, because of III-IV grade liver or spleen injury. In our group we didn't have injuries of any other internal abdominal organs. Laparoscopic treatment of acute abdominal trauma with spleen or liver injury is applicable in I-III grade liver injury and I-II grade spleen injury, while in greater injuries it is necessary to make conversion to laparotomy.