After colectomy there are four options available. The least complicated and most common is to leave the end ileostomy and not go for any reconstructive surgery. Then there is the ileal pouch anal anastomosis (IPAA) in which the rectum is removed, but the anal canal and a small rectal “cuff” is preserved. The pouch is created from the distal ileum and anastomosed to the rectal cuff. In the ileorectal anastomosis (IRA) the rectum is spared, and the distal ileum is anastomosed to the top of the rectum. In the continent ileostomy (CI), also referred to as the Kock pouch, the fecal flow is let out through the abdominal wall, but a pouch and a nipple valve mechanism is created making the stoma continent which needs to be manually emptied.   

This thesis aims to investigate function, quality of life, satisfaction, complications, and aspects associated with the chance of having reconstructive surgery after colectomy for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), i.e. ulcerative colitis (UC) or Crohn’s disease (CD).

The first two papers focus on the continent ileostomy, the most uncommon of the options after colectomy. In Paper 1 all patients who have received a CI at our center were identified and medical charts were reviewed for complications and CI patency. Function and quality of life were evaluated with the 36-item short form survey (SF-36), short health scale (SHS) and a local CI specific questionnaire for function and satisfaction. In Paper II, the Swedish national patient register (NPR) was used to identify all patients with an IBD diagnosis who had received a CI and data on diagnosis, demographics, reoperations, and excisions were obtained from the register.  

Paper III describes an ongoing prospective non-randomized, multi-center, open-label, controlled trial between IRA and IPAA in UC patients subjected to colectomy. The primary endpoint is satisfaction but Quality of Life (QoL), sexual function, bowel function and complications are also evaluated.  

In Paper IV, we investigated if the chance of getting reconstructed after colectomy was dependent on the IPAA volumes at the colectomy hospital using data from the national patient register. The hospitals were arranged in to four categories based on the average annual number of IPAA procedures: (0, 1-3, 4-7, >7 procedures per year).  

In Paper I we found that 59 % of CI patients needed repeat laparotomy after a median follow up of 24 years and nipple detachment was the most common cause of repeat laparotomy. Fifteen patients (18 %) had their CIs converted to end ileostomies and the most common cause for this was fistulas. Eighty-four per cent of CI patients reported satisfaction with their reconstruction. The national study in Paper II identified 727 IBD patients with CI and the median follow-up time was 27 years. During follow-up, 1484 reoperations were performed on 536 patients (74 %). Twenty-six per cent of the patients did not have any reoperations, 24 % had one reoperation, 20 % had two reoperations and the remaining 30 % had between three and 15 reoperations each. The CIs were identified to have been removed in 77 (11 %) patients.  In Paper III we have so far included 47 patients in the intervention arms out of which 35 (74 %) have chosen IRA and 12 patients (26 %) have chosen IPAA. Another 44 (40 % of the whole group) patients have so far received an IPAA but were deemed non-eligible for both IRA and IPAA and were hence not eligible for the intervention arms. So far 18 patients (17 % of the whole group) have chosen an ileostomy. In Paper IV we first identified 4112 UC patients subjected to colectomy between 1997 and 2020.  Out of these 4112 patients, 1932 (47 %) went through some kind of reconstruction, 964 (50 %) IRA, 927 (48 %) IPAA and 41 (2 %) CI. The proportion having restorative surgery  was larger for patients subjected to colectomy at a high IPAA volume center (62 % vs 38 %) and the chance of getting an IPAA increased with each IPAA volume category (Hazard ratios (HR) were: 1; 1.49 95 % CI (1.25-1.78) ; 1.79 95 % CI (1.49-2.15)  and 2.11 95 % CI (1.70-2.62)  respectively)The IPAA volumes did not affect the chance of receiving an IRA or the risk of failure of reconstruction.