Small bowel infarction mimicking Crohn's ileitis.

Despite the advances in vascular surgery and intensive care management, the mortality rate from acute intestinal ischaemia has not improved over the years."2 The advanced age of the patients, the toxic nature of bowel contents and co-existent cardiovascular disease may explain the high mortality rate; the delay in making the diagnosis also may be a major factor. Since there are no reliable laboratory or non-invasive radiological investigations, the diagnosis depends on a high index of clinical suspicion. We report a case illustrating the difficulty in making such a diagnosis, in particular, the problem of distinguishing between small bowel ischaemia and Crohn's disease.