Langenbeck's archives of surgery
-
Langenbecks Arch Surg · Feb 2015
Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative StudyA pilot randomised controlled trial evaluating postoperative packing of the perianal abscess.
Traditional management of a perianal abscess involves incision and drainage followed by packing of the cavity until healing by secondary intention is complete. The evidence supporting this is lacking however, and regular postoperative packing is time-consuming, painful and costly. This pilot study aimed to assess whether healing could be achieved safely without packing and to obtain preliminary results to enable sample size calculation in order to facilitate the implementation of a large multicentre randomised controlled trial. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01853267. ⋯ Within the limitations of a small sample population, the results of this pilot study suggest that not packing the perianal abscess cavity after incision and drainage is safe. Our results show not packing confers less pain with a faster healing time compared with the conventional packing method, and this is a novel finding. These results need to be corroborated in the setting of a larger multicentre randomised controlled trial.