Background: Surgical treatment can impose a high risk of morbidity and mortality in patients with blunt abdominal injuries. Hence, non-operative management (NOM) can offer a safer treatment of strategy, which has been examined in children, while data in adults are still controversial. This systematic review explores non-operative treatment outcomes for different blunt abdominal injuries.
Methods: We conducted a search in large databases, including Medline, Ovid, PubMed, and CINAHL for the articles published over the past 10 years between 2010 and 2020. Search terms used were a combination of non-operative AND management AND Blunt abdominal injury. Then we filtered the results to include only original research articles evaluating the effectiveness and safety of NOM of blunt abdominal injuries. Selected trials mentioned the type of abdominal injury and patient population under investigation.
Result: A total of 890 articles were retrieved. Following the exclusion of ineligible articles, 19 articles appeared. A total of eight articles were selected that met our inclusion criteria, covering a total of 13,692 patients with a blunt abdominal injury, of which 127 patients were from the pediatric population. Three of the included studies were prospective observational, while five studies were retrospective.
Conclusion: NOM is a safe and effective treatment for different types of blunt abdominal injuries, especially in hemodynamically stable patients. More studies with a robust design are required.
Key words: Non-operative, management, abdominal, injury, trauma.
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