Early complications in patients previously treated with corticosteroids.

A retrospective analysis is presented is presented of 205 major operations performed over a 10-year period on 95 previously steroid-treated patients with Crohn's disease (C.D.) or ulcerative colitis (U.C.). All patients had been treated both in the medical and in the surgical gastroenterological department. The incidence of early postoperative complications was high, but there was nothing to suggest a relationship between the complications and the intensity of the preoperative steroid therapy. However, mortality rate, duration of hospital convalescence as well as incidence of complications were found to be significantly lower in those patients who had undergone elective in preference to emergency surgery. The fear of an increased complication rate following intensive steroid treatment of patients with acute C.D. or U.C. is, in our opinion, unfounded.