Postoperative changes of the microbiome: are surgical complications related to the gut flora? A systematic review

BMC Surgery

Table 2 Summary of included publications

Author	Kanazawa et al.	Reddy et al.	Sugawara et al.	Liu et al.	Eguchi et al.
Year	2005	2006	2006	2010	2010
Country	Japan	UK	Japan	China	Japan
Study type	RCT	RCT	RCT	RCT	RCT
Treatment	Synbiotics vs. no Treatment	*	**	Probiotic vs. Placebo	Synbiotics vs. no Treatment
Number of patients included	44 (21 + 23)	88 (24 + 22 + 20 + 22)	81 (41 + 40)	100 (50 + 50)	50 (25 + 25)
Area of surgery	Liver	Colon	Liver	Colon	Liver (Transplant)
Method of quantification	Culture	PCR	Culture	PCR	Culture
C-reactive Protein	Recovery faster	No difference	↓	n. s.	n. s.
White blood cell count	Recovery faster	n. s.	↓	n. s.	n. s.
SIRS	n. s.	No difference	n. s.	No difference	n. s.
Organic acids in stool	↑	n. s.	↑	n. s.	n. s.
Stool pH	No difference	n. s.	No difference	n. s.	n. s.
Rate of infections	↓	No difference	↓	↓	↓
Number of pathogenetic bacteria	↓	↓	No difference	↓	No difference
Number of Lactobacilli and Bifidobacteria	↑	n. s.	No difference	↑	n. s.

If not specified elsewhere, the arrows show the postoperative comparison of the synbiotic/probiotic-treated patients compared to control groups
n. s. not specified, RCT Randomized controlled trial, SIRS Systemic inflammatory response syndrome
*Group 1: Mechanical bowel preparation (MBP) only, Group 2: MBP + Neomycin, Group 3: MBP + Neomycin + Synbiotics, Group 4: Synbiotics + Neomycin, no MBP
**Preoperative synbiotic treatment vs. no treatment, both groups were treated with synbiotics postoperatively

ISSN: 1471-2482