A tissue healing presents a base of successful surgical treatment in the abdominal surgery. The healing impairment brings about a large spectrum of complications including intestinal anastomosis dehiscence, laparotomy wounds dehiscence and postoperative hernia development.

Most healthy individuals go along with the physiological process of healing, however there are some that have one or more factors that bring to impaired healing. Such factors complicate the surgical course.

Nowadays it is essential to plan the costs of each treatment and to establish the methods of potential financial rationalization. In this way the potential problem detection and appliance of different strategies may decrease the complication rate.

The risk factors associated with impaired wound healing include each patient factors, underlying disease, local factors, and additional chronic therapy. Increased risk for healing impairment interferes with patients age and some habits such as smoking, physical activity, alcohol intake. On the other hand, surgical site infection and surgical technique presents the main local factor affecting healing. Finally, a systemic disorder such as malnutrition, immunosuppression, malignant disease, radiotherapy, vascular disease or liver cirrhosis affects the inflammatory and remodeling phase of healing process. There are several conditions that aggravate the healing process as well, such as obesity, immobilization, some specific drugs and/or therapies.

This Topic will provide the information on still doubtful impact on different risk factors on healing process and the possible cost benefit aspects of the new strategies in planning the surgical treatment.

It will cover a wide range of sub-topics including:

• How to minimize the incidence of surgical site infections

• Hybrid surgical techniques that combine ablative and resection techniques in the setting of reducing complication rate

• The choice of surgical methods and/or strategy in patients with chronic systematic disease that affect healing process

• Cost-benefit evaluation of wound care and wound dressing

• Preoperative care and optimization of patients for surgical treatment

Impact

Frontiers in Surgery

Visceral Surgery