[Indication and risk of internal intestinal splinting. Comments and supplement to the published article of W. Kapral: Splinting of the small intestine with the Miller-Abbot tube. Chirurg (1984) 55:394].

The usefulness of splinting of the bowel to prevent recurrent bowel obstruction caused by adhesions is analysed. For that is differentiated between three possible indication groups: 1. late bowel obstruction, 2. early postoperative bowel obstruction, 3. mixed peritonitic and mechanical ileus. The risk of splinting of the bowel can only be seen in relation to the number of recurrences, complications and mortality rates as seen in the three indication groups, treated without splinting. From that it shows that in case of peritonitis splinting can only be an adjuvant measure of therapy, and that in case of both recurrent late bowel obstruction and early postoperative bowel obstruction splinting of the bowel has a real preventive effect. This differentiation in indication is of no importance in childhood.