Surgical management of inflammatory bowel disease.

Indications for operation in patients with inflammatory bowel disease are now standardized as a result of the vast surgicaL experience that has been accumulated during the past 40 years. The surgical indications in Crohn's disease and chronic ulcerative colitis vary minimally with the anatomic distribution of either disease, and can be recognized easily in a particular patient. Consequently, decision or judgment regarding the need for operation is rarely difficult. Delaying operation on the basis of fear of recurrence of Crohn's disease is unrealistic because (1) indications for operation are complications of the disease that have not responded or cannot be expected to respond to medical treatment, (2) conservative resection primarily removes diseased bowel that will never return to normal, (3) many patients, perhaps 50%, will never have recurrence of disease, and (4) those who have recurrence will have experienced varying periods when they were free of disease and relieved of the serious complications for which their operations were performed. The value of surgery in the treatment of patients with chronic ulcerative colitis can be stated even more positively, because recurrence of disease is never a concern after proctocolectomy.