[Toxic colitis. II. Personal experience]

The author presents his own experience with the diagnosis and treatment of 19 patients with acute manifestations of toxic colitis. Patients with ulcerative colitis developed toxic colitis in 11 instances. The second most frequent background for the development of toxic colitis was pseudomembranous colitis. Conservative treatment before 72 hours was successful only in two patients. Seventeen patients were operated at varying intervals after the onset of the disease (1-21 days) and subtotal colectomy was performed with ileostomy and a mucous fistula of the rectosigmoid. The lethality in the whole group was 10.5%. All patients who died (2) were from the group operated on the 5th-7th day, while in the groups operated on the 2nd-5th and 14th to 21st day there were no deaths. In the group two cases of carcinoma were detected.