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SURGERY

Preparing the bowel for surgery: rethinking the strategy

Whether to administer purgative cleansing and oral antibiotics before colon surgery as a method to prevent postoperative infections, once standard of care, is now being considered unnecessary with today’s advancements of care. A new study questions the efficacy of this bowel preparation approach with a prospective randomized trial.

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Fig. 1: Preparing the bowel for surgery in the era of the microbiome.

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Acknowledgements

J.C.A. acknowledges support from NIHR Public Health Research Programme grant R01- GM062344-18.

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Correspondence to John C. Alverdy.

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Alverdy, J.C., Shogan, B.D. Preparing the bowel for surgery: rethinking the strategy. Nat Rev Gastroenterol Hepatol 16, 708–709 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41575-019-0214-y

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