Abstract
Evaluation of the abdomen in critically ill intensive care unit patients remains problematic. Sedation, neuromuscular blockade, and head injury frequently make physical examination unreliable. As intra-abdominal processes frequently contribute to the development of multiple organ failure, it is imperative to establish a diagnosis and initiate treatment as soon as possible while the organ failures remain reversible. A diagnostic algorithm is presented as well as a summary of recent literature that places diagnostic laparoscopy in context with other diagnostic studies for evaluation of the abdomen in this complex population of patients.
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