Objective：To study the impact of preventive transverse colostomy on anastomotic leakage(AL) of low rectal anterior resection(LAR).
Methods：A retrospective analysis on clinical data of 312 cases of middle and lower rectal cancer patients  who underwent LAR at the Department of General Surgery, the Second Clinical School of Medicine, Shanxi Medical University was conducted using Fisher exact test to comparatively analye the impact of preventive transverse colostomy on AL following LAR.
Results：There was no statistical difference(P＞0.05) between the AL rate following LAR with or without preventive transverse colostomy(2/63, 3.2%  vs. 21/249, 8.4%) (P＞0.05).
Conclusions：Preventive transverse colostomy can not effectively reduce the incidence of AL rate following LAR, and besides the patients have preventive transverse colostomy will require reperation to close the colostomy.