Second-look laparotomy was associated with partial bowel resection. One of these patients had to undergo a third intervention for anastomosis leakage and enterostomy was carried out. The patient died of sepsis at the intensive care unit. The other two patients died with septic shock on day 10 and 12 after

the first intervention. There were two other patients, who underwent laparotomy and AMI was diagnosed during exploration. Partial bowel resection was carried out in these patients and a laparoscopic port was placed for subsequent second-look. The patients received local thrombolytic therapy. In one of them, second-look laparoscopy revealed partial bowel necrosis and required partial bowel resection. The patient did not require any further intervention. The second-look laparoscopy for the last patient revealed normal findings, and he did not require any further learn more intervention. He died with myocardial infarction on day 7. The mortality rates according to algorithm are shown in Figure 3. There were no bleeding complications with these 6 patients, who underwent a surgical intervention and LTT. Figure 3 The

mortality rates according to algorithm are shown. Discussion Acute mesenteric ischemia is a potentially lethal disease. Early recognition and accurate intervention remains the cornerstone of treatment. Patients may present with severe abdominal pain despite mild physical signs. Therefore, clinical suspicion is mandatory for the diagnosis,

though these findings may be absent in 25% of cases [10]. In Selleckchem AG-881 this series, all patients presented with abdominal pain. However, symptoms ranged from mild to severe such as acute abdomen. Duplex ultrasonography accurately identifies high-grade stenoses of the celiac artery and superior mesenteric artery (SMA), and is the Apoptosis inhibitor diagnostic modality of choice for chronic mesenteric ischemia. However, it is not suitable for diagnosing acute arterial mesenteric ischemia. It is operator-dependent and overall diagnostic accuracy may change, Baf-A1 ic50 especially at off-hours. Moreover, solely the proximal segment of SMA can be evaluated by duplex because SMA emboli tend to lodge more distally. This creates the potential for a false-negative result [11]. Furthermore, although there are case reports concerning contrast-enhanced ultrasonography in AMI, acute cases usually present with overt abdominal gas and inflammatory changes, which may intervene with imaging by duplex [12]. Therefore, recent advances in optimizing CTA had promising results in diagnosing AMI. Helical, multidetector and multislice CTA is a fast and accurate investigation for the diagnosis of acute mesenteric ischemia [13]. It delineates vascular anatomy, evaluates bowel necrosis and allows early diagnosis. In most cases CTA can be used as a sole diagnostic procedure with 96% sensitivity and 94% specificity [4, 5]. In our patients, we preferred to use CT as a first diagnostic step.