[Colorectal pathology: an analysis and comparison between patients of different ages].

The increasing incidence of large bowel diseases observed in the last years is age-related. The authors have analyzed 366 patients who underwent surgery for colorectal pathology, divided in two groups (> or < 65 years) considering sex, diagnosis, type of clinical presentation, incidence and type of associated pathology, and post-operative complications. The analysis of the series revealed that type of clinical presentation, surgical patterns, post-operative infections were the same in the two groups, as reported in the literature. The substantial differences were only due to the different incidence of colo-rectal pathology, associated pathology and cardiovascular complications, factors that become characteristic of the elderly patients.