A serious complication in colorectal surgery: anastomotic leakage. Our experience

Anastomotic leakage is a severe complication in colorectal surgery with a lot of generic and specific risk factors. There are still controversies about the possibility to prevent it or to limit its severity with the use of faecal diversions. We report our experience on 189 patients operated in five years on colonrectum, in election and emergency, whit manual or mechanical anastomoses in the last 20 cm from the anal verge. We have had 21 anastomotic leakages (11%), symptomatic in 10 cases (5.5%), and 5 deaths (2.6%), 3 directly correlated to the leakage. In the patients (n 98) with loop-ileostomy there wasn't anastomotic leakages reduction, but only of clinical impact. We prefer loop-ileostomy in cases of extraperitoneal anastomoses, always in emergency and in anastomoses at risk.