Abstract
Postoperative ileus (POI) is a transitory cessation of normal bowel activity. It is arguably the most frequent complication after digestive surgery; all the more surprising then to discover that the prevention and treatment of POI still pose many problems and not much progress has been made over the years in reducing its incidence and impact. Besides the clinical impact, POI has a tremendous socioeconomic impact. It prolongs hospital stay by as much as 5 days and increases costs by about 8000 USD per patient. Furthermore POI appears to be the most frequent reasons for prolonged hospital stay and readmission after initial hospital stay. The problem begins with the lack of a standard definition of POI. Vather et al. performed a systematic review of publications that included POI as primary endpoint. In a second step, an online survey informed opinion leaders of the variable definitions of POI identified in the review, in an attempt to come to standardized definitions. The most important finding from the review was that definitions were extremely variable and sometimes contradictory.
The original version of this chapter was revised: A credit line has been added to the caption of Figure 12.1 . The erratum to this chapter is available at: DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-20364-5_30
An erratum to this chapter can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20364-5_30
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Hübner, M., Scott, M., Champagne, B. (2015). Postoperative Ileus: Prevention and Treatment. In: Feldman, L., Delaney, C., Ljungqvist, O., Carli, F. (eds) The SAGES / ERAS® Society Manual of Enhanced Recovery Programs for Gastrointestinal Surgery. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20364-5_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20364-5_12
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