Abstract

Introduction: Spleen is one of the most commonly injured abdominal organ in blunt trauma. Iatrogenic splenic injury accounts for 20% of all splenectomy. A better understanding of importance of the spleen, its role in immune response and increased awareness of "post splenectomy sepsis" syndrome has led to the concept of splenic salvage surgery. Thus this experimental study was done to assess the role of fibrin glue for splenic salvage in grade I and II splenic injuries in albino rats and rabbits

Method: In this study, 60 healthy albino rats and 20 rabbits were used. All albino rats were randomly divided into three groups and rabbits into two groups. Laparotomy was done in all groups and superficial lacerations were made, then fibrin glue application or splenorrhaphy or no intervention was done according to different groups.

Observation: In rabbits all were show healing, there was no difference between the fibrin glue and splenorrhaphy group (P>0.05). There was higher grade of adhesion in higher grade of tear and the difference was statistically significant (P<0.05).  In rats, 3 of the 20 rats (15%) in the control group without intervention showed no healing while all of the 20 rats (100%) in the fibrin glue & splenorrhaphy group respectively healed. Even in rats the difference between the 3 groups was not statistically significant (P>0.05).

Conclusion: Splenorrhaphy and fibrin glue application had no significant difference in healing. Splenorrhaphy had significantly more and higher grades of adhesions than fibrin glue application. Grade of adhesions increased with increasing grade of tear in both rats and rabbits.

Keywords: Fibrin glue, Splenorrhaphy, Adhesion, Shackford’s classification.