Conservative Management of Instrumental Esophageal Perforation in Children; A Review of One surgeon's Experience

Instrumentation of the esophagus to dilate stricture can very occasionally result in many complications, esophageal perforation may be is the most serious one. The main corner stone in the management of which is urgent exploration to define the extent of the lesion and drain the area. To avoid this aggressive, approach to our patients, we choosed to apply conservative management. We reviewed retrospectively records of all the five patients of instrumental esophageal perforations done or referred to pediatric surgery unit in King Abdulaziz University Hospital, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia who were treated by the author conservatively in the period from 1997 to 2011 in our institution. The aim of this study was to review our experience in the conservative management of esophageal perforation in pediatric population, thus to add to the growing evidence with this modality of treatment.The results of successful non operative management of all the cases supports our conclusion that conservative management guided by the clinical response is a safe and effective modality of treatment for esophageal perforation in pediatric population. [Osama M Rayes, FRCSI. Conservative Management of Instrumental Esophageal Perforation in Children; A Review of One surgeon's Experience. Life Sci J 2013;10(1):1941-1944] (ISSN:1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite.com. 278