Reduced rate of dehiscence after implementation of a novel technique for creating colonic anastomosis in pediatric patients undergoing intestinal anastomosis in a single institute

We aimed to investigate the new continuous horizontal mattress anastomosis for pediatric patients who underwent emergency or electively laparotomy. From June 2012 to June 2017, 858 patients undergoing intestinal anastomosis were reviewed retrospectively, including 369 patients with the new continuous horizontal mattress anastomosis and 489 patients with traditional 2 layer interrupted anastomosis, served as control. Propensity score matching was performed to adjust for selected baseline variables. The primary outcome, anastomosis complications and clinical outcomes, including postoperative gastrointestinal function recovery, overall expenditure, and postoperative hospital stay were compared between the 2 groups. Patients with the new manual anastomosis had advantageous postoperative outcomes than those with the traditional 2 layer interrupted anastomosis. A mean of 11.4 minutes was required to construct the new manual single-layer anastomosis versus 18.5 minutes for the traditional anastomosis (P < .001). A reduction trend for postoperative anastomotic complications was indicated in patients receiving horizontal mattress anastomosis (odds ratio [OD] (95% confidence interval [CI]), 0.56 (0.37–0.84); P = .004), including peritonitis or abscess (OD [95% CI], 0.56 (0.32–0.98); P = .026), anastomotic leakage (OD [95% CI], 0.39 [0.12–1.27]; P = .088), and anastomotic strictures (P = .26). Mean length of stay was 10.9 ± 2.9 days for the new manual anastomosis group and 11.3 ± 3.5 days for traditional 2-layer anastomosis patients (P = .12). Beneficial effects of the new manual anastomosis were demonstrated in terms of anastomotic complications, and length of hospital stay in the pediatric patients. Furthermore, it is a novel, feasible and safe method that may simplify the surgical procedure in anastomoses.