PHYSICAL THERAPY FOR EMERGENCY ABDOMINAL SURGERY: STATE OF THE PROBLEM IN UKRAINE

For today there are significant medical advances in surgical treatment of emergency abdominal pathology and surgical techniques. However, the place of physical therapy in guidelines of acute abdominal pathology complex treatment remains insufficiently described in the specialized literature, and its significance in clinical practice underestimated. Emergency abdominal surgical pathology still remains a significant proportion of all surgical diseases, whereas mortality and postoperative complications remain considerably high. Surgical interventions in this cohort belong to the high-risk category in the cases of old age, poor general health with the limited cardiorespiratory reserve, low physical strength and obesity. Among other reasons of this study importance, there are insufficient clinical guidelines and misunderstanding of physical therapy impact on treatment outcome, such as mortality, frequency and type of postoperative morbidity, duration of in hospital stay, quality of life and rate of physical recovery. Only moderate quantity of thorough studies is available, concerning major urgent abdominal pathology complex treatment which comprehends surgical, anesthesia, laboratory, imaging, physiotherapy and nutritional support expertise. However, current evidence from trials remains obscure due to absence of clearly defined, standardized physiotherapy interventions, which limits the comparison in the treatment outcomes assessment. Currently in Ukraine there are no standards of physical therapy in clinical protocol of emergency abdominal surgical pathology. Consequently, there is a necessity for theoretic and practical justification of physical therapy as an important component of comprehensive treatment in the case of emergency abdominal surgical pathology.