[Laparoscopy in the evaluation of blunt abdominal trauma].

Laparoscopic diagnostics provides fast, reliable, clear, and obvious information on extent and depth of abdominal organs injury with minimizing additional trauma to the patient. It is performed without any specific preparations and, if needed, it may be promptly converted into conventional laparotomy. Through use of optical equipment with various refraction angles and through variable patient positioning, laparoscopic technique enables visualization of whole abdominal cavity. In approximately 20% of cases of unclear findings, and after other performed diagnostic procedures, laparoscopy provides definitive diagnosis. Abdominal surgeons are familiar with this method, making interpretaion of the results very fast and reliable and, what is the most important, this method avoids additional trauma caused by conventional laparotomy.

Hepatic abscess secondary to a rosemary twig migrating from the stomach into the liver.

The ingestion of a foreign body that penetrates the gastric wall and migrates to the liver, where it causes an abscess is uncommon. A case of an ingested rosemary twig perforating the gastric antrum, then migrating to the liver, complicated by hepatic abscess and Staphylococcus aureus sepsis is reported. A 59-year-old man without a history of foreign body ingestion was admitted to our hospital because of sepsis and epigastralgia, which had progressively worsened. No foreign body was identified at preoperative imaging, but a rosemary twig was discovered during laparotomy. The liver abscess and sepsis were controlled successfully with surgery and antibiotics. This unusual condition should be kept in mind when dealing with cases of hepatic abscess, or even sepsis of unknown origin. Despite the improvement of non-surgical techniques such as percutaneous drainage and interventional endoscopy, surgery still remains important in the treatment of hepatic abscess caused by an ingested foreign body.

[Relation between cytokine IL-6 levels and the occurrence of systemic complications in patients with multiple injuries and blunt abdominal trauma]. / Odnos nivoa citokina IL6 i ucestalosti sistemskih komplikacija kod politraumatizovanih sa tupom abdominalnom traumom.

Severe trauma is the third cause of death and the first one in the most vital and young population. In USA more children die of trauma then of all other causes. Blunt abdominal trauma takes 56% cases of multiple traumas of all etiologies. Among multiple injured patients, near to 50% have some system-complications, more of 60% in the group of critically injured (ISS > 35). Cytokines play the main role in the inflammatory reaction during the early phase response on trauma. Their secretion predicts system-complications as ARDS, SIRS, even MODS. Hypothetically, level of concentration of Interleukin-6 (IL 6) can improve methods of early diagnostic procedures for detecting SIRS and MODS, when scores are still low (preclinical level), at which stages therapy is more powerful and also cheaper. This prospective study includes 35 multiple injured persons with blunt abdominal trauma (75 > ISS > 18). We have used standard diagnostic procedures. Concentration of IL 6 was detected with ELISA-test. Levels of IL 6 were significantly higher in correlation with SIRS score groups. Correlation with MODS score was not significant for the lowest scores, but IL 6 showed significant higher levels in the second and the third MODS score group.