Abstract
Conventional wisdom indicates that, provided that there is no peritonitis, a reasonably good-risk patient who has been properly resuscitated can safely undergo an emergency right colectomy and ileocolic anastomosis. In this case one might expect, perhaps, a 3% rate of anastomotic leakage. However, there are very few published reports of large series of patients undergoing emergency surgery for complete right colon obstruction. Following curative resection of obstructed right colon cancer, Serpell and associates reported a postoperative mortality rate of 3.7%, compared with 14.3% for resections of obstructed left colon tumors. In their experience, resecting an obstructed right colon lesion was no more dangerous than resecting an unobstructed right colon cancer.
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References
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Serpell JW, McDermott FT, Katrivessis H, Hughes ESR. Obstructing carcinomas of the colon. Br J Surg 1989; 76:965–969.
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© 1994 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Chassin, J.L. (1994). Operations for Colon Obstruction. In: Operative Strategy in General Surgery. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-4169-8_47
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-4169-8_47
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-4171-1
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