Peritoneal Lavage for Severe Acute Pancreatitis: A Meta-analysis and Systematic Review.
The aim of this study was to assess the efficiency and safety of peritoneal lavage in patients with severe acute pancreatitis.



A comprehensive search was performed to identify randomized controlled trials that compared peritoneal lavage with conservative treatment for severe acute pancreatitis. The primary outcome was all-cause mortality. Secondary outcomes included complications rate, proportion of need for operation, length of hospital stay, and medical costs.



A total of 899 patients from 15 studies were subjected to this systematic review. Peritoneal lavage did significantly decrease the mortality (relative risk, 0.47; 95% confidence interval, 0.34-0.66; P < 0.01), with low heterogeneity among the studies (I = 7%). Peritoneal lavage also seemed to significantly alter any of the other end points.



Peritoneal lavage shows robustly beneficial effect in patients with severe acute pancreatitis in this systematic review. However, the results should be interpreted with caution due to the general high risk of bias in these included studies.
From the *Department of Critical Care Medicine, Hebei United University Affiliated Hospital, Tangshan; †Department of Geriatrics, Aerospace Center Hospital, Beijing; and ‡Department of Critical Care Medicine, the First Hospital of Qinhuangdao, Qinhuangdao, China.
Zhiqiang
Z
Li
Chunhui
C
Xia
Li
L
Zhang
Yingang
Y
Zhang
Zizhuo
Z
Liu
Fang
F
Qiu
D000208:Acute Disease; D006801:Humans; D007902:Length of Stay; D010195:Pancreatitis / Q000401:mortality / Q000628:therapy*; D010533:Peritoneal Lavage; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic; D012307:Risk Factors; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D015996:Survival Rate; D016896:Treatment Outcome