Table 1.

Colorectal postsurgical complication definitions

Postsurgical Complication	Abbreviation	Definition
Deep vein thrombosis (DVT)/pulmonary embolism (PE)	DVTPE	DVT is the formation of a blood clot, known as thrombus that usually occurs in the leg although it can happen in other parts of the body. Part of the clot can break off and travel to the lung, where it blocks the oxygen supply, casing heart failure, known as PE.
Bleeding	BLEED	Anastomotic bleeding is common and varies in severity. More serious bleeding can be managed with epinephrine and saline retention enemas. If this fails, surgical intervention can be performed.
Wound infections	INFECTION	Wound infections occur in 5–15% of patients following colorectal surgery and typically present around the fifth postoperative day and treated by opening of the overlying skin incision.
Myocardial infraction	MI	Acute myocardial infarction occurring during surgery or within 30 days after surgery.
Ileus	ILEUS	Ileus is simply defined as bowel obstruction. CT scan of the abdomen and pelvis has the sensitivity of 90–100% for diagnosis and evaluation of small bowel obstruction.
Abscess/Leak	ABSCESS	Extravasation of contrast material limited to the perianastomotic space often results in the development of an abscess, a pocket of infected fluid and pus. This is usually managed by insertion of a radiologically-guided percutaneous drainage catheter. Anastomotic leak varies depending on the level of anastomosis. Small bowel and ileocolic anastomoses have the lowest rates and coloanal anastomoses have the highest rates.