[Causes of intestinal obstruction]

There were 468 patients (58% females and 42% males) operated for mechanical bowel obstruction over the period of 13 years, i.e. between 1987 and 1999 included into this study. In 82.3% of these patients the obstruction involved the small intestine; in this group 5.1% had multi-level obstruction related to massive carcinomatous dissemination. The remaining 17.7% of the patients had colonic obstruction. The most common cause of small bowel obstruction was intestinal strangulation (N = 352). Two thirds of those patients had strangulated hernias, and one-third--obstruction due to adhesions. In the former group, the majority of subjects suffered from femoral hernia incarceration, while inguinal hernia strangulation was somewhat less common. In 9 patients we observed rare small bowel obstruction caused by a gallstone. Of 83 patients with large intestine obstruction, in 80 (96.4%) obstruction was caused by a primary tumor. In the presented material we observed a higher rate of strangulated hernlas then the rate of obstruction due to adhesion, which is opposite to a typical pattern of developed countries. Most likely this difference results from a lower number of elective hernioplasty performed in Poland then in the USA and Western Europe.