Colorectal Surgery
8 condition pages in this specialty.
Intestinal Ischaemia
2 topicsAcute Mesenteric Ischaemia
Sudden loss of blood supply to the small bowel, most often an embolus from the heart lodging in the superior mesenteric artery, causes rapidly progressive transmural infarction; the hallmark is severe pain out of proportion to a soft abdomen, and survival depends on revascularising the gut before it dies.
Ischaemic Colitis
A fall in colonic perfusion below what the mucosa needs, striking hardest at the watershed zones where two arterial territories barely overlap, so the splenic flexure suffers first and the resulting mucosal injury produces the classic pairing of left-sided pain and bloody diarrhoea.
Anal Fissure
An anal fissure is a painful anoderm tear, usually posterior midline; relieve constipation and sphincter spasm, and investigate atypical or refractory disease for secondary causes.
Colorectal Cancer
Colorectal cancer is usually an adenocarcinoma of the colon or rectum whose presentation, local treatment and chance of cure depend on site, TNM stage and tumour biology; FIT helps select symptomatic patients for referral but cannot safely rule cancer out when clinical concern persists.
Diverticular Disease
Diverticulosis means asymptomatic colonic diverticula, diverticular disease means symptoms without systemic inflammation, and acute diverticulitis is sudden inflammation or infection that may be uncomplicated or complicated by abscess, perforation, fistula, stricture, obstruction or sepsis; diverticular bleeding is often a separate painless presentation.
Haemorrhoids
Haemorrhoids are symptomatic anal cushions causing bleeding, prolapse, itching or pain; do not assume rectal bleeding is haemorrhoidal without appropriate examination and cancer-pathway judgement.
Perianal Abscess and Fistula
Blockage of a mucus-secreting anal gland lets bacteria multiply into a walled-off abscess, and if that pus tracks a path to the skin before it is drained, the epithelialised tunnel it leaves behind becomes a persistent fistula-in-ano.