Is There a Role for Fibrin Glue (Sealant) in Seroma Reduction After Inguinal Lymphadenectomy?

Seroma is one of the most frequent complications occurring after ILND as it affects nearly one third of these cases. During the past decades, many actions have been tried in the perioperative care to decrease the incidence of these complications, as employing well vascularized bulky flaps to obliterate the dead space and to protect vessels, great saphenous vein sparing, strict bed rest and fibrin sealant application. Realizing the underlying pathology for seroma formation is the key point in its prevention. Thirty-nine patients scheduled to perform Inguinal lymphadenectomy for various causes have been checked for eligibility to be enrolled in this prospective, randomized study. Thirty-two patients have met the inclusion criteria. Inguinal lymphadenectomy has been performed including scarifying saphenous vein. Sartorius muscle transposition flap was routinely performed for protection of femoral vessels, then an 18 French conventional non-suction tube drain was inserted in all patients. All the previous steps were similar in both groups. At this stage, the wound was closed for the control group, while fibrin glue was prepared to be applied to the fibrin glue group in a dose of 2mL for 100 cm2 surface area. Postoperatively, the daily collected drain fluid was measured till the drain was removed when the daily drainage was less than 30 ml. Then the patients were planned to be followed up postoperatively for at least 4 weeks, to detect the possible clinically encountered complications as seroma, wound infection, or skin flap necrosis.

Patients' demographic data and preexisting co-morbidities were recorded. Operative and pathological data regarding defect size, blood transfusion, primary tumor pathology, and number and status of retrieved lymph nodes were collected. The occurrence of post-operative seroma was the primary outcome. Other non serious adverse effect as hematoma, infection, or skin flap necrosis were recorded and compared between the two groups.

The normality of distribution of variables was verified by Kolmogorov- Smirnov test. Chi-square test (Fisher or Monte Carlo) was used for comparisons between groups for categorical variables. Student t-test was used to compare two groups for normally distributed quantitative variables. For not normally distributed quantitative variables, Mann Whitney test was used to compare between two groups. P value was set to be significant if <0.05.