Impact of Computed Tomography Evaluation Before Colonoscopy for the Management of Colonic Diverticular Hemorrhage

The purpose of this study was to investigate and summarize our experience of a standardized strategy using computed tomography (CT) followed by colonoscopy for the assessment of colonic diverticular hemorrhage with focus on a comparison of CT and colonoscopy findings in patients with colonic diverticular hemorrhage.

Colonic diverticular hemorrhage is usually diagnosed by colonoscopy, but it is difficult to identify the responsible bleeding point among many diverticula.

We retrospectively included 257 consecutive patients with colonic diverticular hemorrhage. All patients underwent a CT examination before colonoscopy. All-cause mortality and rebleeding-free rate after discharge were analyzed by Kaplan-Meier analysis and compared using the log-rank test.

In CT examinations, 184 patients (71.6%) had definite diverticular hemorrhage with 31.9% showing intraluminal high-density fluid on plain CT, 39.7% showing extravasation, and 31.1% showing arteriovenous increase of extravasation on enhanced CT. In colonoscopy, 130 patients (50.6%) showed endoscopic stigmata of bleeding with 12.1% showing active bleeding, 17.1% showing a nonbleeding visible vessel, and 21.4% showing an adherent clot. A comparison of the locations of bleeding in CT and colonoscopy showed that the agreement rate was 67.3%, and the disagreement rate was 0.8% when the lesion was identified by both modalities patients with definite diverticular hemorrhage identified by CT had a longer hospital stay, higher incidences of hemodynamic instability and rebleeding events than did patients with presumptive diverticular hemorrhage.

CT evaluation before colonoscopy can be a good option for managing patients with colonic diverticular hemorrhage.