BACKGROUND: Despite refinements in the field of gastrointestinal surgery, anastomotic leakage still remains a serious problem associated with substantial morbidity and mortality and is the fearest life threatening complication in digestive surgery. To prevent or reduce these complications, a diversity of line reinforcement techniques have been investigated and several adjunctive measures have been developed. AIM: To review the data associated with the application of adhesives in digestive surgery procedures. METHOD: Review of papers available at Medline/Pubmed database using the follow headings: adhesive, gastrointestinal tract, surgical anastomosis, fistula. It was chosen recent articles on the subject which showed adhesives as strategy to reduce morbidity and mortality related to digestive surgery. CONCLUSION: Tissue adhesives appears to be safe in the clinical setting and are been used with increasing frequency in a variety of surgical field for its unique hemostatic and adhesive abilities, gaining increasing acceptance among surgeons. Studies suggest that surgical adhesive can be useful to reinforce and improve intestinal anastomotic healing, increase anastomotic bursting pressures and tensile strength. The potentially harmful tissue effects of the preparations might compromise the use of these substances. Because of the heterogeneity and lack of high level evidence, new studies have to be performed.
Adhesive; Gastrointestinal tract; Surgical anastomosis; Fistula