Is a big omentum the surgeon's best friend or worst enemy? Review

The interest of surgeons in the greater omentum is associated with a unique combination of such functions as plasticity, immune defense, barrier, hormonal, angiogenesis and regeneration for adjacent tissues, reabsorption, hemostatic, thermoregulation. The purpose of this review was to track the historically changing position of operations with the use of the greater omentum in abdominal, thoracic surgery, reconstructive plastic surgery, analyze the aspects of the use and controversial issues of omentization of the anastomoses line and omentoplasty in modern conditions, as well as highlight promising directions for the use of the greater omentum in medicine. in the sources of domestic and foreign databases until July 2021. Information about the negative consequences of omentectomy is given - a decrease in local and general immunoresistance, the development of adhesive disease, an increase in the number of postoperative purulent-inflammatory complications. It is useful for the surgeon to use a large omentum in non-standard and technically difficult cases. Situations are described in which a radical attitude to the greater omentum is justified - torsion of the omentum strand, metastasis, adhesions, omentitis, entrapment in hernias, complications from the pedicle flap. Analysis of the literature revealed ambiguous results of omentization and omentoplasty, which indicates the need for randomized studies in this area, the development of clinical recommendations for these operations with a description of clear indications and methods of carrying out.