[The Hartmann intervention. The current indications and the authors' own experience]

Seventy years after it was first presented at the 30th Congress of the French Association of Surgery Hartmann's operation still fulfils a necessary albeit limited role in colorectal surgery. It is generally regarded as necessary in emergency surgery when general or local conditions advise against immediate anastomosis or would make it dangerous, or more rarely it is used electively in palliative neoplastic pathologies. The authors report their personal experience over twenty years and the reasons which led them to opt for this technique rather than others. Their personal postoperative mortality rate is similar to that reported in the literature and is not correlated to surgical trauma but rather to the severity of clinical conditions.