Introduction: Laparoscopic surgery has long been used for colon and rectal resection, and the laparoscopic-assisted approach has prevailed in surgical practice. While this technique includes the fashioning of an intra-corporeal anastomosis, it still requires an abdominal incision for specimen extraction. Elimination of the abdominal incision and its potential complications has been the motivation for the development of natural orifice specimen extraction (NOSE) techniques. Many of these techniques make use of an open rectal stump, which poses as a potential for intra-abdominal contamination.
Aims: Our group has recently described a novel, NOTES assisted, clean, endoluminal rectal resection utilizing transabdominal and transanal approaches. In this paper we report the combined experience of two study groups: an open approach to the abdominal cavity and a laparoscopic approach to the peritoneal cavity.
Methods: Ten female pigs were used for this research; 5 in a group using an open approach and 5 using a laparoscopic approach for the abdominal part of the procedure. During the procedure, the rectum was mobilized. An end-to-end circular stapler was used to create a recto-rectal intussusception and pull-through (IPT). The specimen was resected and extracted by making a full thickness incision through 2 bowel walls. The stapler was applied, and a recto-rectal anastomosis created. This was allowed to retract into the abdomen. Peritoneal fluid was sampled for bacteria, the pigs were sacrificed immediately after the experiment and necropsy was performed.
Results: All 10 pigs underwent an endoluminal rectal resection utilizing the trans-anal IPT technique. The proximal and distal resection margins remained approximated over the shaft of the anvil after bowel resection in all 10 subjects. A 2- to 4-mm resection margin, distal to the ligatures was accomplished consistently in all 10 subjects. No aerobic or anaerobic bacterial growth was observed in any of the peritoneal fluid samples.
Conclusions: Our research demonstrated the feasibility of the described technique in both open and laparoscopic approaches to a clean endoluminal bowel resection and trans-anal specimen extraction without rectal stump opening. The fact that no bacterial growth was found in any of the peritoneal samples supports the initial classification of this novel technique as clean, as opposed to clean contaminated, which classifies all other techniques in use to date.