Background: Complications frequently occur after neonatal enterostomy. Enterostomy formation is a common outcome following an emergency neonatal laparotomy. This study investigated whether the incidence of complications after enterostomy could be decreased with a drainage device (composed of foreskin cerclage staple, a condom, and a 0-Mersilk braided nonabsorbable suture) fixed in the proximal ostomy bowel tube to improve proximal enterostomy in newborns. Methods: This study was a retrospective case note review of the incidence of emergency neonatal enterostomy incidence over a 3-year period (2/2016-2/2019) at the authors' center. A single surgeon conducted all surgeries. The incidence of intraoperative and postoperative complications was compared between modified and traditional surgery groups. Results: All 47 surgeries were successfully completed (32 boys and 15 girls; sex ratio: 2.13:1). The mean (±SD) birth weight, gestational period, and daily age were 2.64 ± 0.81 kg 35.62 ± 3.76 weeks and 3.49 ± 5.61 days, respectively. The patients were divided into modified surgery groups (20 cases) and traditional surgery groups (27 cases). The modified surgery group had significantly lower rates of total complications, unplanned reoperations, wound-related complications, and stoma-related complications than the traditional group (p <0.05). Conclusions: The preliminary observations suggested that the simple drainage device was a safe and effective operation device that reduced the risk of stoma-related complications.
Keywords: complications of enterostomy; extremely low birth weight infants; neonatal enterostomy; neonatal laparotomy.