Assessment of the use of disposable skin staplers in bowel anastomoses to reduce laparotomy time in penetrating ballistic injury to the abdomen.

Laparotomy and anastomosis of the small bowel after penetrating injury to the abdomen is a lengthy procedure. This paper describes the use of skin staplers for bowel anastomosis and presents the results of a short series of experiments upon dead pigs to compare the staple technique with conventional handsewn anastomosis. The time taken to perform each small bowel anastomosis, the integrity of the anastomosis and the skill required were assessed. The staple technique was considerably faster (mean construction time: 5.4 min, range 4-6 min) than the handsewn technique (mean construction time: 12 min, range 10-14 min), at least halving the anastomosis time (Kolmogorov two-sample test P = 0.05). In addition, the stapled anastomosis had a higher intraluminal failure pressure (mean failure pressure: 65 cmH2O, 6.37 kPa, range 30-70 cmH2O) than the handsewn anastomosis (mean failure pressure: 38.6 cmH2O, 3.78 kPa, range 10-70 cmH2O).