Abstract     Introduction: Peritonitis is a life-threatening condition and one of the reasons for high mortality. Peritonitis due to perforation affects the general condition and leads to complications causing multiple organ failure, renal failure, overwhelming sepsis and post op Respiratory failure. Reproducible scoring systems that allows a surgeon to determine the severity of the intra abdominal infection are essential to: 1) ratify the effectiveness of different treatment regimens, 2) scientifically compare surgical intensive care units, 3) help indicate individual risk to select patients who may require a more aggressive surgical approach and 4) be able to inform patient’s relatives with greater objectivity. In the past 30 years, many prognostic scoring systems have been developed for critical patients. Presently, most accepted scores is APCHE II (which intergrates various physiologic variables during the first 24 h within the intensive care unit (ICU)), the Mannheim Peritonitis Index (MPI;{13} and the Peritonitis Index Altona 11(PIA 11). Last both scores are based on information collected before and during operation and include physiological and general variables as well as those specific to peritonitis. The use of scores for the accurate and reliable prediction of mortality or morbidity in individual patients with peritonitis has not yet been analysed fully. We have therefore carried out a prospective trial to test Manheim prognostic scoring system’s ability to predict outcome (death or survival) in patients with peritonitis.

Keywords: Peritonitis, Multiple organ failure, APCHE II, Peritonitis Index Altona, Mannheim Peritonitis Index.