Abstract
It is well known that emergency endoscopy of upper G-I tract is valuable for the diagnosis and management of acute gastrointestinal bleeding. However, emergency endoscopy is not widely applied to colorectal diseases because of the technical difficulties to introduce the scope and to inspect the lesion during acute bleeding. Therefore, the definition of emer-gency colonoscopy is not established yet. During the last 6 years and 9 months, colonoscopy was performed to 113 cases of acute anal bleeding probably from the lower intestine within 7 days of its onset. Afetr a single enema with 100 ml glycerin or without any preparation, colonoscopy was performed in a conventional manner. In 94 cases (83.2%), the causes of bleeding were diagnosed correctly by emergency colonoscopy. In 11 cases (9.7%), some lesions were found out, but these causes of hemorrhage were not able to confirmed by this technique because of no more blood in the intestine and / or subsidence of inflammation around the lesions. On the other hand, in two cases (1.8%), the lesions were misdiagnosed, and any lesions were not able to be found out in 6 cases (5.3%). When the endoscopic examination was per-formed within 3 days after bleeding, the diagnostic accuracy was better than the delayed examined group; i. e. 89.6% in confirming the bleeding focus. Consequently, it is emphasized that emergency colonoscopy should be performed within 3 days after the onset of anal hemorrhage for the correct diagnosis and management of the bleeding.
