Long-term Follow-up of Fournier's Gangrene in a Tertiary Care Center

Background: After surgical debridement, the use of fecal diversion systems (such as an endo-rectal tube or surgical colostomy) in Fournier's Gangrene (FG) to assist with wound healing remains controversial.

Methods: A 6-y retrospective review of a tertiary medical center emergency surgery database was conducted. Variables abstracted from the database include patient demographics, laboratory and physiological profiles, hospital length-of-stay, intensive care unit length-of-stay, operative data, time to healing, morbidity, and mortality.

Results: Thirty-five patients were treated. Seventy-seven percent (n = 27) required some form of fecal diversion (21 patients using an endo-rectal tube and six patients undergoing construction of a surgical colostomy). One patient had a pre-existing colostomy before the development of FG. The remaining seven patients underwent conservative wound care with multiple daily dressing changes (no diversion system). Twenty-eight of the 35 patients (80.0%) had long-term follow-up with 100% having completely healed surgical wounds at the final clinic visit. Average time to complete wound healing was 4.8 ± 1.0 mo (range, 1.0-31.0). Of the six patients who underwent colostomy formation, two had their colostomies reversed, two were unacceptable surgical risk and did not undergo reversal (due to uncontrolled diabetes and cardiovascular disease), and two were lost to follow-up. Of the two patients who had their colostomies reversed both had complications from their reversal (leak and urinary retention).

Conclusions: Surgical colostomy may not be mandatory (and might be associated with a high additional morbidity) in FG. With appropriate patient selection, it may be possible to avoid colostomy formation using a less-invasive diversion technology without compromising patient outcomes.