ABSTRACT
Introduction Acute and chronic mesenteric ischemia are rare clinical conditions which carry significant morbidity and are often fatal if left untreated. The successful surgical treatment for acute mesenteric ischemia (AMI) and intestinal infarction was first reported in the nineteenth century by Elliot1 but it was not until 1957 that Mikkelsen described the first successful surgical revascularization in a patient with chronic mesenteric ischemia (CMI).2 Since those two publications the traditional treatment for these conditions has been surgery. Despite significant progress in diagnostic procedures and surgical techniques, AMI continues to carry a very high mortality rate. Whether new percutaneous approaches may decrease the fatality rate in patients with AMI remains to be seen, but at present there are only anecdotal reports in selected patients on the percutaneous treatment of AMI as was discussed in the previous chapter. If successfully discharged from the hospital, surgery usually confers lasting symptom relief in the majority of the patients with CMI. However, the procedural morbidity and mortality rates are high which makes catheter-based therapy more attractive for this sick group of patients. In the present chapter the surgical treatment and the surgical indications for both acute and chronic mesenteric ischemia are discussed.
