Diagnostic Peritoneal Lavage

ABSTRACT

Diagnostic peritoneal lavage is a accurate and safe method confirming the intraabdominal injury with head trauma, unstable multiple injuried patients. But the development of imaging technique and the trend in noninvasive diagnostic value is decreasing now. In the emergency room, the emergency physicians are required the rapidity and accuracy' in intial assessment and the decisions for the operation or not. So emergency physicians have been investigating the diagnostic method for intraabdomial injury that is more rapid, safe and accurate. Many diagnostic tools are developed and now accepted and used widely, among them the diagnostic peritoneal lavage is still the best method for unsatble or head injuries patients. But the positive diagnostic criterias are variable by many authors and still remain imperfectly. So our study was reviewed by medical record of patients who were undertaken the diagnostic peritoneal lavage for the diagnosis intraabdominal injury and statistical analyasis was done compared with many criteria of red blood cell and white blood cell for the more actuate way. A retrospective study of diagnostic peritoneal lavage was done of 90 patients with blunt abdominal trauma during 2 years from January, 1996 to December, 1997 and summerized our experience. The results were as follows; 1) There are 73 males and 17 females in sex. The most common type of injury was the traffic accident. 2) With many variable criteria of RBC and WBC, the accuracy and the false positive and false negative were not different in statistical results. The average accuracy was 80.1%. 3) The operations were done in 30(33.3%) cases, and the most frequent injuried organ was the small bowel, 20 cases(66.7%).