Ultraflex precision colonic stent placement as a bridge to surgery in patients with malignant colon obstruction.

Background: Emergency surgery for malignant colon obstruction entails relatively high morbidity and mortality rates and typically necessitates a 2-step resection. These problems might be potentially mitigated by placement of a self-expanding metal stent (SEMS) as a bridge to surgery. A nitinol colorectal SEMS may offer several advantages, but available evidence on the utility of this SEMS type remains highly limited.

Dynamic anal endosonography may challenge defecography for assessing dynamic anorectal disorders: results of a prospective pilot study.

Background And Study Aims: The diagnosis of anorectal dynamic disorders and perineal insufficiency has been mainly based up to now on the use of defecography. Here, we performed a prospective blinded study to evaluate the accuracy of a new procedure, dynamic anorectal endosonography (DAE), by comparing it with defecography.

Patients And Methods: A total of 43 women (mean age 53), presenting with outlet obstruction, were prospectively enrolled in our study.

Chronic pancreatitis and inflammatory bowel disease: true or coincidental association?

Objective: Several cases of pancreatitis have been described during the course of Crohn's disease (CD) or ulcerative colitis (UC), but many of them were related to either biliary lithiasis or drug intake. We tried to evaluate the clinical and morphological features of so-called idiopathic pancreatitis associated with inflammatory bowel disease and to define their pathological characteristics.

Methods: Chronic idiopathic pancreatitis was diagnosed on the basis of abnormal pancreatograms suggestive of chronic pancreatitis associated with or without impaired exocrine pancreatic function, or pathological examination in patients undergoing pancreatic resection.