[Review of anti-adhesion prophylaxis methods--the past and the present].

Formation of postoperative adhesions presents a serious and complex problem in clinical practice. Apart from standard surgical procedures, a variety of different substances to prevent adhesions is available, but no universal method has been developed so far Clinical trials and animal studies on preventing the formation of postoperative adhesions and substances that can have potential anti-adhesive properties have been carried out for over one hundred years. Considerable discrepancies and ambiguities regarding research results, as well as a great number of anti-adhesive substances to be tested, demonstrate the scope and the nature of the problem. Recently new anti-adhesive fluids and pharmacological agents have been developed, which in preliminary observations seem to be almost perfect. The following paper reviews available literature on anti-adhesive methods and the authors' limited experience