Serial Bogota bag tightening: A pragmatic advance in open abdomen management for resource-limited settings

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Open abdomen management poses unique challenges in resource-limited settings, where costly dynamic fascial traction techniques remain inaccessible. Balhara et al 's prospective randomized trial published on the World J Gastrointest Pharmacol Ther introduces serial Bogota bag tightening, a bedside, negligible-cost method using urine bags and sutures, as an effective dynamic fascial traction alternative, achieving skin-to-skin distance ≤ 5 cm in 9.94 days vs 13 days in controls (P = 0.0003) and shortening hospital stays without added morbidity. This editorial appraises the study’s strengths, contextualizes it against negative pressure wound therapy/mesh systems, and advocates its scalability for low- and middle-income countries, urging multicenter validation of long-term fascial closure.