Emergency surgery for acute colonic haemorrhage--a retrospective study

This paper reports a retrospective study of 28 patients undergoing emergency laparotomy and colonic resection for acute colonic haemorrhage out of a total of 292 patients admitted with the condition. The paper concludes that in those cases where the bleeding site cannot be accurately localized angiographically prior to laparotomy, the preferred surgical procedure should be total abdominal colectomy with ileoproctostomy as more limited colonic resection leads to an unacceptably high morbidity and mortality.