Despite the associated morbidity with continent ileostomy surgery, long-term results and quality of life were encouraging. Continent ileostomy may be offered as an attractive long-term option to select patients whose only alternative is an end ileostomy.
Continent ileostomy can be defined as a surgical procedure that facilitates planned intermittent evacuation of a bowel reservoir through an ileostomy. It was devised by Nils Kock in 1969. Subsequently, continent ileostomy (or Kock pouch) became a viable alternative in the management of patients who had traditionally required an end ileostomy. Kock pouch appeared to provide substantial physical and psychosocial benefits over a conventional ileostomy. The procedure became popular until ileal pouch anal anastomosis (IPAA) was introduced in 1980. Despite its benefits, continent ileostomy had many short term complications including intubation problems, ileus, anastomotic leaks, peritonitis and valve problems. Operative mortalities have also been reported in the literature. Most of these problems have been eliminated with increasing experience; however, valve-related problems remain as an "Achilles' heel" of the technique. Many modifications have been introduced to prevent this problem. Some patients have had their pouch removed because of complications mainly related to valve dysfunction. Although revision rates can be high, most of the patients who retain their reservoirs are satisfied with regard to their health status and quality of life. Today, this procedure is still appropriate for selected patients for whom pouch surgery is not possible or for patients who have failed IPAA. Both the patient and their physician must be highly motivated to accept the risk of failure and the subsequent need for revisional operations.
We herein report the case of a 51-year-old man with gastrojejunocolic fistula. It is one of the late severe complications of gastrectomy and gastrojejunostomy and is considered to be induced by a stomal ulcer due to inadequate resection of the stomach and incompleteness of vagotomy. The main clinical presentation of this condition is chronic abdominal pain, weight loss, diarrhea, gastrointestinal bleeding and fecal vomiting. The diagnostic workup should include barium enema, gastroscopy and sometimes colonoscopy and abdominal tomography for excluding and ruling out the possibility of malignant extraluminal disease. The historical approach of the treatment of this rare entity was 2–3-phased operations which included colostomy. However today, medical management has recently been recommended as the first-line therapy, with parenteral and enteral support treatments. The preferred surgical approach is single-stage gastrocolic resection and anastomosis and this has been favored to minimize mortality.
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