The British journal of surgery
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This is a review of 261 patients operated for 271 instances of mechanical intestinal obstruction over a 5-year period in a developing country in the tropics. The pattern of intestinal obstruction in Chinese is similar to that in Caucasians, where adhesions account for the largest number of cases. ⋯ The major adverse factors in intestinal obstruction, i.e. extremes of age, associated disease, gangrenous bowel, large bowel obstruction and malignancy, were confirmed. Fluid and electrolyte imbalance was frequent, as in other tropical series, but with intensive preoperative correction it was not an important adverse factor.