Post-operative sepsis: Is CT reliable in diagnosing the cause of post-operative sepsis?

Abstract Aim To assess the reliability of computerised tomography in post-operative sepsis in patients who previously underwent laparotomy in the same hospital admission. Introduction Method This study was done on re-operations following an abdominal operation from April 2012 to April 2016 at a district general hospital. Data regarding demography, initial operation, post-operative problems, pre-operative diagnosis, and use of computed tomography, the findings on CT, and operative findings were collected. A comparison was made between the CT findings and findings on re-laparotomy. Also noted was the number of patients who did not have a re-laparotomy following CT. Result There were 87 patients, of whom, 10 had no accessible notes and were removed from the list. Of the remaining 77, 53(68.8%) had CT scans, 24 did not (31.2%). Of these that had CT, 29 (54.7%) had findings which matched with intra-operative findings on re-laparotomy, in 12 (22.6%) CT findings did not match 4(7.5%) had minor findings not needing surgery and 8(15.5%) had normal or insignificant findings. Conclusions We found in this study that, CT did have a significant contributory role in the arsenal of methods to aid source control in those patients that are septic following an abdominal operation, and this should be used as a pre-operative diagnostic modality.