[Ischaemic colitis (author's transl)]

Abstract

Attention must be drawn to the fact that especially in elderly patients with acute onset of abdominal pain concomitant with haemorrhagic, mucous diarrhoea, ischaemic colitis must be considered in the differential diagnosis. Ischaemic colitis arises as a consequence of insufficient blood flow through the peripheral branches of the middle colic artery and inferior mesenteric artery and mostly strikes the left colonic flexure, the colon descendens or sigmoid. Because of the segmental involvement and the macroscopic appearance on X-ray and endoscopy the disease is sometimes indistinguishable from Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis. In every day clinical life ischaemic colitis is a relatively rare phenomenon, in spite of the high incidence of arterial occlusive disease in the patients treated at this unit. The increasing frequency of ulcerative colitis in elderly patients, as reported in the literature, may be partly associated with unidentified cases of ischaemic colitis and this possibility is discussed.