Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to C S Thagaard.
Gastrocolic fistulas are rare, and are usually seen as complications of peptic ulcer or malignancy of the stomach and large intestine. We have described a case resulting from chronic relapsing pancreatitis. The patient was successfully treated with excision of the fistula and closure of the gastric and colonic wall.
A retrospective study is presented of 297 patients operated upon for perforated benign gastric ulcer in Denmark from 1975 to 1984. Male:female ratio was 0.9:1, mean age 64.2 years. The numbers of gastric and prepyloric perforations were almost equal (156:141), but gastric perforations were more frequent in elderly women and prepyloric perforations in younger men. Simple closure was performed in 83 per cent of the patients, gastric resection in 14 per cent and simple closure and vagotomy in 3 per cent. The postoperative mortality rate was 21 per cent and was related to the high proportion of elderly patients with concurrent diseases and delayed treatment.
Sixteen patients were treated for gastrocolic fistula arising as a complication of peptic ulcer (11 cases), colonic perforation (2), gastric cancer (1), colonic cancer (1) or pancreatitis (1). The predominant symptoms were diarrhoea, weight loss and abdominal pain. Barium meal and barium enema were the most reliable means of diagnosis, and no fistula was gastroscopically demonstrable. A one-stage en bloc resection of the involved gastrocolic region was performed in eight cases. Other operations were simple excision (3), gastric resection with closure of the colonic wall (2) and colectomy with closure of the gastric wall (2). In one case cure was achieved with cimetidine, without surgical intervention. Four patients died postoperatively and two had recurrence of fistula.
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