Abstract

Professor Dr İhsan Numanoğlu had reviewed numerous books and manuscipts during the preparation for his textbook named “Pediatric Surgery”- the first two volumes textbook in Turkish and he had had a great pleasure sharing interesting topics with us. He was the first person to tell us that fluorescein could be used for identification of bowel necrosis in necrotizing enterocolitis which we had the chance to use this information in one of our research studien many years later.

Laparoscopic evaluation has been found helpful in premature infants with necrotizing enterocolitis in published case series in recent years. Fluorescein is known to be used widely for the diagnosis of retinopathy in premature babies without any adverse effect. We have combined these two modalities in a research in Cape Town and published our experience of fluorescein laparoscopy in patients with necrotizing enterocolitis in 2011.

We observed that fluorescein laparoscopy was superior to standard laparoscopy in identifying bowel segments with necrosis.