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An estimated 10% to 15% of patients with acute diverticulitis present initially with complicated disease (i.e., abscess or fistula formation, perforation, or hemorrhage). Some of these patients require emergency surgery, but others can be managed nonoperatively. Because the recurrence rate is relatively high when patients with complicated diverticulitis are initially managed nonoperatively, guidelines in some countries recommend elective colonic resection shortly after the initial presentation. To determine whether elective resection is beneficial, investigators used a known difference between Swiss and Scottish rates of elective resection as the basis for a retrospective study of 19,000 inpatients (median age, ≈67) with index episodes of c…