The management of lower gastrointestinal bleeding.

Lower gastrointestinal (LGI) bleeding is generally less severe than upper gastrointestinal (UGI) bleeding with spontaneous cessation of bleeding in 80% of cases and a mortality of 2-4%. However, unlike UGI bleeding, there is no consensual agreement about management. Once the patient has been stabilized, the main objective and greatest difficulty is to identify the location of bleeding in order to provide specific appropriate treatment. While upper endoscopy and colonoscopy remain the essential first-line examinations, the development and availability of angiography have made this an important imaging modality for cases of active bleeding; they allow diagnostic localization of bleeding and guide subsequent therapy, whether therapeutic embolization, interventional colonoscopy or, if other techniques fail or are unavailable, surgery directed at the precise site of bleeding. Furthermore, newly developed endoscopic techniques, particularly video capsule enteroscopy, now allow minimally invasive exploration of the small intestine; if this is positive, it will guide subsequent assisted enteroscopy or surgery. Other small bowel imaging techniques include enteroclysis by CT or magnetic resonance imaging. At the present time, exploratory surgery is no longer a first-line approach. In view of the lesser gravity of LGI bleeding, it is most reasonable to simply stabilize the patient initially for subsequent transfer to a specialized center, if minimally invasive techniques are not available at the local hospital. In all cases, the complexity and diversity of LGI bleeding require a multidisciplinary collaboration involving the gastroenterologist, radiologist, intensivist and surgeon to optimize diagnosis and treatment of the patient.

Imaging in infections of the left iliac fossa.

The main organs in the left iliac fossa are the descending colon, sigmoid colon and, in women, internal reproductive organs. An infection of the left iliac fossa must lead the clinician firstly to suspect diverticulitis of the sigmoid colon in older patients and salpingitis in women of childbearing age. Other less common aetiologies are possible (inflammatory or infectious colitis, epiploic appendagitis, abscess of the psoas, pyelonephritis, renal abscess, etc.). Sonography as a first-line investigation may lead to diagnosis (especially in gynaecological disease), but a CT scan with intravenous injection of an iodine-containing contrast medium will allow for a full assessment of disease spread, and complications of sigmoid colitis or its differential diagnoses (abscess, fistula, perforation) to be investigated. It can also be used to guide percutaneous drainage or fine-needle aspiration for microbiology investigations.