Abdominal Compartment Syndrome – a Surgical Emergency

Over the past six decades, abdominal compartment syndrome (ACS) remained a very controversial subject, both in surgical and non-surgical specialties. Doctors failed to understand why critically ill patients died in the ICU with distended abdomens without fi nding any cause or why postoperative patients with wound defects such as dehiscence died after suturing the wound again „very tightly”. After the concept of intra-abdominal pressure (IAP) was established and methods for measuring it and diagnosing intra-abdominal hypertension (IAH) were available for clinicians to use it, it became clearer that ACS was a very serious and life threating pathology and the need for a correct treatment is essential. In this article we will try to make a literature review of the past decade and see when and how to diagnose correctly a patient with ACS and also how the diagnostic and treatments methods changed over the years.