Materials and Methods
Patients who were diagnosed with and received treatment due to spontaneous rectus sheath hematoma between the years 2010 and 2020 were included in the study. Patients with trauma induced hematoma, cases under 18 years of age, and patients whose data cannot be reached were excluded from the study. A database was created based on patient files, nurses’ patient observation charts, and electronic records. Patients were analyzed retrospectively with the help of the database that was created.
Demographic features, body mass indexes (BMI), comorbidities, American Society of Anesthesiologists scores(ASA), past surgical histories, histories of anticoagulant and antiplatelet drug use and indications, laboratory parameters at the time of admission to the hospital, physical examination and radiological findings of the patients; stage, location and diameter of the rectus sheath hematoma; treatment modalities; number of transfusions; follow-up parameters; durations of hospital stays; and mortality data were evaluated.
SRH was staged based on the the staging system in (Table 1)which was created by Berná et al. 11
Clinical conditions of the patients were considered in the selection of the treatment modalities. Conservative treatment included bed rest, analgesia, discontinuation of the anticoagulant, and transfusions carried out based on daily clinical follow-ups and daily follow-up of laboratory test results while surgical therapy included hematoma drainage accompanied by ligation of the epigastric vein.
This study was carried out at a university hospital and all the data was collected and evaluated following the approval thereof by the ethical committee of the same institute.
Statistical Analysis
IBM Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) Statistics for Windows 24 (IBM Corp., Armonk, N.Y., USA) package program was used in the statistical analysis of the data. Categorical measurements were summarized as numbers and percentages, and continuous measurements were summarized as mean and standard deviation (minimum-maximum when necessary).