Pseudomembranous Colitis Surgery

Pseudomembranous colitis is an inflammatory disease of the colon (see image below). It has changed in the last 100 years from a fatal disease caused by a postoperative event to, in the era of antibiotics, a commonly occurring complication of antibiotic use that may lead to serious morbidity but that usually is treated easily.
Colonic pseudomembranes of pseudomembranous colitis. Photographs courtesy of Eric M. Osgard, MD.

• In the late 1800s, prior to the availability of antibiotics, Finney reported the first case of pseudomembranous colitis, calling it "diphtheritic colitis."
• Hall and O'Toole first described Clostridium difficile in 1935
• C difficile was first implicated as a causative factor in pseudomembranous colitis in the 1970s