An introduction of tertiary peritonitis

Abstract

Intraperitoneal infection known as peritonitis is a major killer in the practice of clinical surgery. Tertiary peritonitis (TP) may be defined as intra-abdominal infection that persists or recurs 48 h following successful and adequate surgical source control. A planned or on-demand relaparotomy after an initial operation is probably most frequent way to diagnose TP, but is a late event to occur. Hence it is desirable to have timely and nonoperative diagnosis of TP after the initial operation and subsequent initiation of an appropriate therapy to reduce the complications and to improve the outcome.