Comparison of Peritoneal Closure Versus Non-closure After Non-infected Elective Laparotomy with a Midline Incision: A Randomized Clinical Trial

There is no consensus regarding closure or non-closure of peritoneum in laparotomy, and this topic remains a controversy among surgeons.

This clinical trial aimed to compare short-term and long-term benefits of peritoneal closure with non-closure in an academic medical center.

In this double-blinded two-arm parallel-group randomized trial, 124 patients undergoing laparotomy with midline incision were assessed from March 2019 to September 2019 at Imam Hossein Medical Center, Tehran, Iran. We used the Rand function of the Excel software to randomly assign 62 patients to the peritoneal closure group and 62 patients to the non-closure group. The patients were evaluated for short-term complications including wound-related fever, infection, need for analgesics, pain in the first 2, 6, 24, and 48 hours postoperatively according to the Visual Analogue scale (VAS), duration of hospitalization, as well as long-term complications including incisional hernia and intraperitoneal adhesion one year after the surgery. Statistical analysis was carried out with SPSS version 22 software.

The non-closure peritoneum group had a lower rate of wound-related fever, infection, and analgesic need than the peritoneal closure group, but these differences were not statistically significant (P = 0.488, P = 0.455, and P = 0.062, respectively). The adhesion rate and incisional hernia incidence one year after the surgery were not significantly different between the two groups (P = 0.363, P = 0.586). Pain intensity was significantly lower in the non-closure group than in the closure group in the first two, six, and 24 hours (P = 0.008, P = 0.004, and P = 0.047, respectively) but not significantly at 48 hours (P = 0.146).

Peritoneum closure after non-emergency, non-infected laparotomy increases the postoperative pain while it has no benefit for long-term complications like incisional hernia or intra-peritoneal adhesion.