[Delayed rehabilitation of colostomized patients. Our experience]

Rehabilitation by means of periodic irrigation is an easy-to-use method that is generally well accepted by the patient. By "giving up" an hour less a day, or better still every 48 hours, the patient can avoid the inconvenience of numerous, continual and uncontrollable evacuations. In confirmation of previous experiments, no significant differences were observed concerning early rehabilitation (up to 10 years after the operation). Irrigation has also been shown to have few negative aspects.