[Colonic angiodysplasia: an important cause of digestive hemorrhage]

Angiodysplasia of the colon is one of the most common causes of lower gastrointestinal bleeding in elderly patients. The diagnosis can be made by colonscopy or angiography. The best treatment, endoscopic coagulation or surgical resection, is still being debated. Over a period of nearly seven years, 5 patients with angiodysplasia of the colon were treated in our Department. The treatment was right hemicolectomy for all patients with localization at the caecum or ascending colon; in the only patients with segmoid localization a segmentary resection was performed. During a mean follow-up of 22.8 months no patient had any further bleeding. In our opinion surgery is a satisfactory treatment, even if for localization on the left colon a conservative treatment should be preferred.