2 weeks Ago
Chennai: A 61-year-old woman, who had a urinary tract infection (UTI) for nearly 18 months despite several rounds of medication, was diagnosed with a rare condition — spontaneous colo-vesical fistula . On Saturday, doctors said she had recovered completely after surgery. "When she came to the hospital, she had taken multiple rounds of antibiotics but did not have any relief.
Gas in the bladder was found passing with the urine — a condition called pneumaturia ," said Dr Mehta's hospital chief urologist, Dr Pavan Arcot. "We diagnosed that she had a spontaneous colo-vesical fistula," he said. It is a rare condition where the colon and bladder connect abnormally.
Several conditions, including diverticulitis (a gastrointestinal condition that occurs when pouches in the large intestine become inflamed or infected), cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, congenital abnormalities, and trauma, can cause the condition. "It is uncommon for a patient to present with a colo-vesical fistula without an underlying disease. Our patient had no prior medical history or underlying diseases.
This made the diagnosis case challenging," said Arcot. When scans and other laboratory tests confirmed the diagnosis, doctors told the family that surgery would be inevitable. "A delay would have led to serious life-threatening complications.
The early and proactive approach taken by the patient's attenders was instrumental in the success of the surgery," said the hospital's deputy head of minimal access and general surgery, Dr Nabeel Nazeer. During the laparoscopic surgery , doctors separated the colon and bladder, removed a part of the bowel that contained the fistula, repaired the damage, and placed a patch between the colon and bladder to prevent future fistulas. The minimally-invasive surgery helped her recover faster without serious blood loss or complications, doctors said.
"She has recovered from the surgery and has no symptoms of urinary tract infection," they added..
