Minimally invasive surgery and Crohn's disease

Patients with Crohn's disease are operated on with a morbidity of 15% and a mortality of 0% if the indication for surgery is decided in good time. After ileocecal resection the probability of having a second resection in 15-20 years is about 50%. When elective surgery is done at an early disease stage, ileocecal resections and reoperations for anastomotic stenosis can be performed by assisted laparoscopy assisted. Laparoscopic colonic resections are done more rarely. Acute and life-threatening conditions such as obstruction, perforation and sepsis are excluded from the laparoscopic approach. In a combined series of 222 laparoscopic resections for Crohn's disease, the following types of surgery were included: ileocecal resections (75), anastomotic resections (26), small intestinal resections (4), loop ileostomies (17), gastrojejunostomies (3), partial colonic resections (15), colectomies (16), loop colostomies (2) and one adhesiolysis. Two patients who sustained intraoperative bleeding underwent conversion of laparotomy. The conversion rate ranged from 0 to 22%. Reasons for 32 conversions were: large inflammatory mass (14), severe inflammation (5), fistula (3), abscess (1), perforation (1), small intestine dilation (1) and mesenteric thickening (1). Mean operative time for ileocecal resections ranged from 105 to 200 min. The postoperative hospital stay was 5 to 8 days. As more experience is gained and technical improvement is achieved, additional procedures such as resolution of severe adhesions, fistula closure and resections of colonic segments will be offered to the majority of patients who require elective surgery for localized Crohn's disease.