[Combined surgery of the large intestine and biliary tract]

The article deals with the experience in the treatment of 204 patients with diseases of the biliary tract who underwent operation for various diseases of the colon. In 147 of them intervention on the colon was carried out simultaneously with cholecystectomy and other operations on the biliary tract. In 57 patients the gallbladder was not removed and in 7 (12.2%) of them the immediate postoperative period was marked by the development of complications connected with a disease of the gallbladder. As a result 3 out of the 57 patients were operated on for a second time. The frequency of postoperative complications among patients who were subjected to combined operations was 46.9%, the death rate--4.8%. It is important to point out that these indices hardly differed from those in the general group of patients (4.2% and 4.8%, respectively). Thus, cholecystectomy combined with intervention on the colon is admissible and, undoubtedly, expedient because it prevents the development of complications of cholelithiasis in the early postoperative period and saves the patient from undergoing a second operation on the biliary tract later.