Massive Bowel Infarction

Abstract

RECENT experience at this hospital and elsewhere suggests that certain cases of massive bowel infarction from arterial insufficiency can be satisfactorily handled by a direct approach to the occluded artery, by either embolectomy^{1 2 3} or thromboendarterectomy,⁴ thus expanding therapeutic possibilities in patients in whom resection would be impossible or crippling. Cases have been encountered, however, in which this approach has not been rewarding — for example, where no obstructions are found in the mesenteric vessels despite bowel infarction or where ischemia persists after early and complete embolectomy. In both situations bowel ischemia has been apparently due to a factor other than . . .