A Scoping Review of Animal Models for Development of Abdominal Adhesion Prevention Strategies

Abdominal adhesions represent a chronic postsurgical disease without reliable prophylaxis. Animal modeling has been a cornerstone of novel therapeutic development but has not produced reliable clinical therapies for prevention of adhesive small bowel obstruction. The purpose of this scoping review is to analyze animal models for abdominal adhesion generation by key considerations of external validity (i.e., fidelity, homology, and discrimination).

A literature review was performed in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews Extension for Scoping Reviews guidelines. Peer-reviewed publications were included that described the development or quality assessment of experimental animal models for abdominal adhesions with inclusion of a scoring system. Studies that focused on treatment evaluation, implantation of surgical devices, models of nonsurgical etiologies for abdominal adhesions, non-in vivo modeling, and investigations involving human subjects were excluded.

Four hundred and fifteen (n = 415) articles were identified by prespecified search criteria. Of these, 13 studies were included for review.

Translation of investigational therapeutics for abdominal adhesion prevention is dependent upon high-quality experimental animal models that reproduce the clinical adhesions seen in the operating room as a disease of the entire abdomen.