The safety of endoscopic day surgery for colorectal polyps

The removal of colorectal adenomas by endoscopy is considered effective for preventing colorectal cancer. However, postpolypectomy hemorrhage remains a common and serious complication. In general, endoscopic resection of colorectal polyps is performed with hospitalization, but it is unclear if this reduces the risks of complications during polypectomy. We routinely remove all the colorectal adenomas of outpatients without hospitalization during a single colonoscopy and term this endoscopic day surgery of the colon. In this paper, we detail the rate of complication of this procedure in our unit. We reviewed the records of patients who underwent endoscopic resection of the colon at our unit between April 2003 and March 2006. We recorded polyp size, location, gross morphology and the presence or absence of complications. The frequency of complications was analyzed using Fisher's two sided exact test.: Two thousand, seven hundred and fifty-six colorectal polyps were resected from 1410 patients at our unit. Postpolypectomy hemorrhages occurred in only five lesions among five patients (i.e., 0.2% of 2756 lesions in 0.4% of patients). No patient required a blood transfusion or surgical treatment. No perforation was found during the study period. The frequency of postpolypectomy complication was low, even though EDS was used to resect all colorectal polyps regardless of their size, number and gross morphology.