Acute mesenteric ischemia: causes and mortality rates over sixteen years in southern Iran.

Acute mesenteric ischemia (AMI) is a catastrophic disorder of the gastrointestinal tract with high mortality. Few data on the characteristics of this disease in Iran are available. Patient records of public and private hospitals in Shiraz, southern Iran, with impression of acute abdomen, bowel gangrene or abdominal pain, and patients with risk factors for this disease, who were admitted between March 1989 and March 2005, were reviewed. Among the 10,000 patient records studied, 105 patients (mean age 57 years) with AMI were identified. The mortality rate was 50.4%. The most common symptom was abdominal pain (98.1%). Heart diseases were seen in 44.7% of cases. The mortality rate was lower in patients undergoing mesenteric angiography (p=0.014). In those patients in whom the site of lesion was identified, venous thrombosis was the most common type (41.9%). AMI is a common cause of acute abdomen especially in elderly patients, with venous thrombosis being the most common type.