Open Treatment in Diffuse Suppurating Peritonitis

The term of “diffuse suppurating peritonitis” means an inflammation of the peritoneal cavity, as a whole. This disease has been well known for 2000 years, already from a time when peritoneal surgery did not yet exist. In 1735, Lorenz Heister published the case history of a patient with perforated appendicitis together with an abscess and peritonitis. Greek, Roman, and Arabic knowledge during the Renaissance prevented surgeons from proceeding more aggressively. As early as in 1776 Herlein, remarkably, applied abdominal lavage in inflammatory abdominal processes. The German pioneer of peritoneal surgery was Wegener stating, in 1876: “The peritoneum is not untouchable…” [11]. Mikulicz was the first to make a detailed report of opening the peritoneum of a patient with diffuse peritonitis, in 1884. He refused, however, abdominal drainage treatment because the abdomen “is undrainable.” Martin Kirschner (1926) and Korte (1927) introduced new therapeutic concepts of peritonitis that are still valid today [9].