[Injuries of the colon and emergency surgery]

Tough less frequent that small bowel lesions, injuries and contusions of the colon rank second among the lesions sustained by hollow organs. They can be differentiated into contusions due to pressure in persons with multiple injuries, and penetrating wounds caused by blades or firearms. Although the latter involve multiple sites, they are most often clearly delineated and can be immediately and completely repaired, whereas contusions account for more severe parietal lesions, which sometimes require temporary bypass. The poor reliability of plain radiographs enables clinical investigations to recover an importance they seemed to have lost. Mortality has become very low in younger subjects, but it remains high after 60 years of age, and depends directly on the extent of peritoneal sepsis and on the associated deficiencies.