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The severity of acute diverticulitis ranges from mild, simple inflammation to pericolic abscesses, or perforation with faeculent peritonitis. Treatment of diverticulitis has evolved towards more conservative and minimally invasive strategies. The aim of this review is to highlight recent concepts and advances in management.

A literature review was performed on the electronic databases MEDLINE from PubMed, Embase and the Cochrane Library for publications in English. The keywords ‘diverticulitis’, ‘diverticular’ were searched for the past decade (to September 2013).

Diverticulitis occurs frequently in the Western world, but only one in five patients develops complications (such as abscess and perforation) during the first acute presentation. The reported perforation rate is 3·5 per 100 000 population. Based on recent data …