Diverticulitis of the Cecum and Ascending Colon

Diverticulitis of the cecum and ascending colon is a relatively uncommon disease which presents difficult problems in diagnosis and treatment. Potier was first to report a case of cecal diverticulitis, in 1912.¹Anderson reviewed the first significant series of cases of cecal diverticulitis in 1947.²Lauridson and Ross in 1952 and Greany and Snyder in 1957 subsequently reviewed the literature and added their own cases.³,⁴Vaughn and Narsete reviewed the case reports of diverticulitis of the ascending colon in 1953.⁵We collected 327 cases of cecal and ascending colon diverticulitis from the previous reviews and the American literature,⁶⁻¹⁴and added 18 new ones to make a total of 345 cases. However, 20 of the total number of cases were excluded because of inadequate information, and 7 were excluded because no operation was performed. This paper, therefore, reviews 318 cases of surgically treated diverticulitis of the