The term abdominal surgery broadly covers surgical procedures that involve opening the abdomen (laparotomy).
Globally, there are few studies comparing perioperative mortality following abdominal surgery across different health systems.
One major prospective study of 10,745 adult patients undergoing emergency laparotomy from 357 centres in 58 high-, middle-, and low-income countries found that mortality is three times higher in low- compared with high-HDI countries even when adjusted for prognostic factors.
Internationally, the most common operations performed were appendectomy, small bowel resection, pyloromyotomy and correction of intussusception.
[4] There is low-certainty evidence that there is no difference between using scalpel and electrosurgery in infection rates during major abdominal surgeries.