Clinical Features of Ischemic Colitis

Abstract

There is question about the cause of ischemic colitis to be truely ischemic or not. The majority of the transient ischemic colitis have non-occlusive pattern in vascular patency. They are speculated to be from functional occlusion of small mesenteric vessels.
Clinically, abdominal pain, diarrhea and melena make the initial symptom complex. The left half of the colon is affected with high incidence and also with mild lesions, whereas the right half has low incidence, but high with severe lesions. Longitudinal ulcerative lesions may be one of the endoscopic chorocteristics of this disease.
In the cases not having typical signs of ischemic colitis, they must be differentiated from the mimic lesions as follows; 1) infectious colitis, 2) pseudomembranous colitis, 3) radiation colitis, 4) diverticulosis, 5) vascular ectasia of the right colon, 6) acute extensive bowel ischemia due to SMA insufficiency. And obscure lesions not included in any lesion mentioned above should be reserved as a non-specific colitis.