[Clinical experience with fibrin gluing in general and thoracic surgery]

Fibrin sealing was applied in 615 cases to patients in the Surgery I Department of Salzburg County Hospitals, between April 1st, 1978 and April 30th, 1985. Fibrin glue Tissucol (Immuno, Vienna) was used in all cases. Need for additional sealing of sutures and anastomoses (n = 331), haemostasis and wound dressing on parenchymatous organs (n = 125), and glueing of skin grafts (n = 97) were the most common indications. Postoperative complications occurred to eight cases (6.4 per cent) in the wake of haemostatic glueing of parenchymatous organs, with lethality being 1.6 per cent (n = 2). One of the patients had to be relaparotomised. Fistulation, following additional sealing of anastomoses and sutures, was recorded from 4.9 per cent of the patients, with the rate of lethality being 0.6 per cent. Inadequate healing of skin grafts was observed in eleven per cent of all cases. Side effects of the fibrin sealant, say, hepatitis, were not observed at all.