Radical peritoneal debridement for established peritonitis. The results of a prospective randomized clinical trial.

A randomized, prospective comparison of radical peritoneal debridement and standard surgical management of peritonitis disclosed no differences in terms of hospital mortality for the frequency of reoperation for abscess. Adjunctive measures such as antibiotic therapy and peritoneal irrigation were identical between the groups. The groups were demographically and clinically similar but had a much lower incidence of intestinal obstruction than in the patients originally reported by Hudspeth.