[Prevention of peritoneal adhesions by local treatments. Experimental study in the rat]

Those local treatments that are most used clinically for the prevention of adhesions in the pelvis have been evaluated experimentally using peritoneal abrasion in the rat. In a first experiment these products, namely dexamethasone, high molecular weight dextran, and noxytioline, were compared with a saline solution on the one hand which confirmed the effect of these substances in preventing adhesions, and on the other hand showed that noxytioline was about as effective as dextran 70 and better than corticosteroids. The score for adhesions that were found were; in the control series an average of 9.25, in the dexamethasone series 6, in the dextran 70 series 4.1 and in the noxytioline series 4.00. This last substance, which has been for less broadly studied than dextran, was then made the subject of a second experiment carried out in the same way as the first, and showing that the anti-adhesion effect was not something that was added on to its anti-bacterial effect because noxytioline alone was more effective than a broad spectrum antibiotic by itself, and adding the two together gave a still better result. It would seem to us that using noxytioline and dextran 70 together does not improve the results achieved by using each substance by itself.