Colorectal Anastomotic Leakage: A new, Validated Rat Model

In colorectal surgery, anastomotic leakage (AL) is known to be a frequent and life-threatening complication.The literature reports incidences of 5 to 17% of cases [1][2][3].AL is associated with morbidity and mortality: AL patients undergo more radiological diagnostics, need prolonged Intensive Care Unit (ICU) admission, require more re-operations, require the construction of stomas, and, although debated, might even suffer from higher local and distant oncological recurrence rates and decreased long-term survival [4][5][6][7][8][9].During the past decades, much research has been carried out to overcome the problem of AL.Part of this research is focused on the identification of risk factors, prediction, and diagnostics for anastomotic leakage [3,10,11] whereas other studies focus on developing new techniques to improve anastomotic strength or healing [12][13][14].This latter research often includes the use of