Mortality and prognosis of obstructing carcinoma of the large bowel.

In a series of 760 patients with adenocarcinoma of the colon and rectum, 103 patients presented with acute obstruction requiring urgent surgical decompression. Obstructed patients were slightly older and had slightly more advanced tumors than the total group. Obstructing lesions of the left colon treated primarily by staged procedures had relatively low mortality and five year survival figures comparable to unobstructed cases. Obstructing lesions of the right colon had a much poorer absolute five year survival rate, mainly because of the high operative mortality associated with primary resection in our institution. Five year survival after curative resection in patients with obstructing tumors of the right colon was considerably less than in patients with nonobstructing tumors. A suggestion is made for consideration of proximal external bowel decompression in association with resection of the right colon.