1986 Volume 47 Issue 5 Pages 588-592
Radiotherapy for malignant tumors is effective and established. However, there are many complications in radiotherapy. A typical complication is radiation enterocolitis. It is difficult to treat severe histological damage to the irradiated tissues. This paper reports our experience with 26 patients with radiation enterocolitis for whom surgical treatment was given during a period of 16 years in our surgical department. The most frequent original disease requiring irradiation was cancer of the cervix uteri (15 cases) which was followed by cancer of the urinary bladder (7 cases). All of these patients had received external 60Co irradiation. The ileum was the most frequent site of the lesion, followed by the rectum, sigmoid and descending colon. The period between the end of irradiation and the onset of enterocolitis ranged from 2 months to 10 years, with an average of 28 months. The main symptoms were intestinal obstruction in the ileum, and melena and fistula in the rectum and sigmoid colon. Intestinal resection was performed in 10 patients, a bypass operation in 4, and colostomy in 12. As to types of intestinal suture in these cases, Gambee's single layer method was thought useful from our experience. Colostomy as surgical managment of melena and fistula did not yield satisfactory results.
