Restrictive and liberal fluid administration in major abdominal surgery

OBJECTIVES: To determine whether perioperative fluid restrictive administration can reduce specific postoperative complications in adults undergoing major abdominal surgery. METHODS: We searched the MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Google scholar, and article reference lists (up to December 2015) for studies that assessed fluid therapy and morbidity or mortality in patients undergoing major abdominal surgeries. The quality of the trials was assessed using the Jadad scoring system, and a meta-analysis of the included randomized, controlled trials was conducted using Review Manager software, version 5.2. RESULTS: Ten studies with a total of 1160 patients undergoing major abdominal surgeries were included. We found that perioperative restrictive fluid therapy could reduce the risk of postoperative infectious complications (odds ratio [OR]=0.54, 95% confidence interval [CI]:0.39-0.74, p=0.0001, I(2)=37%), pulmonary complications (OR=0.49, 95% CI: 0.26-0.93, p=0.03, I(2)=50%), and cardiac complications (OR=0.45, 95% CI: 0.29-0.69, p=0.0003, I(2)=48%), but had no effect on the risk of gastrointestinal complications (OR=0.87, 95% CI: 0.51-1.46, p=0.59, I(2)=0%), renal complications (OR=0.76, 95% CI: 0.43-1.34, p=0.35, I(2)=0%), and postoperative mortality (OR=0.62, 95% CI: 0.25-1.50, p=0.29, I(2)=0%). CONCLUSION: Perioperative restrictive fluid administration was superior to liberal fluid administration in reducing the infectious, pulmonary and cardiac complications after major abdominal surgeries.