Percutaneous management of retroperitoneal abscesses.

Retroperitoneal abscesses have been a difficult diagnostic and therapeutic challenge in the past. With the advent of precise noninvasive imaging modalities, they now are defined more easily. Percutaneous guided catheter drainage has changed our therapeutic approach to this disease and enabled rapid and complete drainage to be performed in the majority of cases. Although the literature is replete with documentation of the percutaneous management of intra-abdominal abscesses, series dealing with retroperitoneal abscesses exclusively are surprisingly infrequent. We report on the percutaneous treatment of 31 retroperitoneal abscesses and the combined percutaneous and surgical management of 4 additional cases.