Hartmann's reversal after colonic perforation or anastomosis leakage, is it the same procedure? A retrospective study of 150 patients

Safety profile of a multimodal fail-safe model to minimize postoperative complications in oncologic colorectal resections-a cohort study

BACKGROUND

Despite innovations in surgical techniques, major complications following colorectal surgery still lead to a significant morbidity and mortality. There is no standard protocol for perioperative management of patients with colorectal cancer. This study evaluates the effectiveness of a multimodal fail-safe model in minimizing severe surgical complications following colorectal resections.

METHODS

We compared major complications in patients with colorectal cancers who underwent surgical resections with anastomosis during 2013-2014 (control group) with patients treated during 2015-2019 (fail-safe group). The fail-safe group had preoperative bowel preparation and a perioperative single dose of antibiotics, on-table bowel irrigation and early sigmoidoscopic assessment of anastomosis in rectal resections. A standard surgical technique for tension-free anastomosis was adapted in the fail-safe approach. The chi-square test measured relationships between categorical variables, t-test estimated the probability of differences, and the multivariate regression analysis determined the linear correlation among independent and dependent variables.

RESULTS

A total of 924 patients underwent colorectal operations during the study period; however, 696 patients had surgical resections with primary anastomoses. There were 427 (61.4%) laparoscopic and 230 (33.0%) open operations, while 39 (5.6%) laparoscopic procedures were converted. Overall, the rate of major complications (Dindo-Clavien grade IIIb-V) significantly reduced from 22.6% for the control group to 9.8% for the fail-safe group (p < 0.0001). Major complications mainly occurred due to non-surgical reasons such as pneumonia, heart failure, or renal dysfunction. The rates of anastomotic leakage (AL) were 11.8% (22/186) and 3.7% (n = 19/510) for the control and fail-safe groups, respectively (p < 0.0001).

CONCLUSION

We report an effective multimodal fail-safe protocol for colorectal cancer during the pre-, peri-, and postoperative period. The fail-safe model showed less postoperative complications even for low rectal anastomosis. This approach can be adapted as a structured protocol during the perioperative care of patients for colorectal surgery.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

This study was registered in the German Clinical Trial Register (Study ID: DRKS00023804 ).

Identification of risk factors for morbidity and mortality after Hartmann's reversal surgery - a retrospective study from two French centers

Hartmann’s reversal procedures are often fraught with complications or failure to recover. This being a fact, it is often difficult to select patients with the optimal indications for a reversal. The post-recovery morbidity and mortality rates in the literature are heterogeneous between 0.8 and 44%. The identification of predictive risk factors of failure of such interventions would therefore be very useful to help the practitioner in his approach. Given these elements, it was important to us to analyze the practice of two French university hospitals in order to highlight such risk factors and to allow surgeons to select the best therapeutic strategy. We performed a bicentric observational retrospective study between 2010 and 2015 that studied the characteristics of patients who had undergone Hartmann surgery and were subsequently reestablished. The aim of the study was to identify factors influencing morbidity and postoperative mortality of Hartmann’s reversal. Primary outcome was complications within the first 90 postoperative days. 240 patients were studied of which 60.4% were men. The mean age was 69.48 years. The median time to reversal was 8 months. 79.17% of patients were operated as emergency cases where the indication was a diverticular complication (39.17%). Seventy patients (29.2%) underwent a reversal and approximately 43% of these had complications within the first 90 postoperative days. The mean age of these seventy patients was 61.3 years old and 65.7% were males. None of them benefited from a reversal in the first three months. We identified some risk factors for morbidity such as pre-operative low albuminemia (p = 0.005) and moderate renal impairment (p = 0.019). However, chronic corticosteroid use (p = 0.004), moderate renal insufficiency (p = 0.014) and coronary artery disease (p = 0.014) seem to favour the development of anastomotic fistula, which is itself, a risk factor for mortality (p = 0.007). Our study highlights an important rate of complications including significant anastomotic fistula after Hartmann’s reversal. Precarious nutritional status and cardiovascular comorbidities should clearly lead us to reconsider the surgical indication for continuity restoration.