Abstract

PRIETO, Robin Germán et al. Unexpected causes of acute abdomen. rev. colomb. cir. [online]. 2016, vol.31, n.4, pp.269-275. ISSN 2011-7582.

Acute abdomen is a painful abdominal syndrome which requires rapid assessment and medical, endoscopic, or surgical treatment. There are several classifications and, according to the etiology, it may be traumatic and non-traumatic; the latter can be of obstructive, inflammatory, or of vascular type. Patients undergoing surgery for acute abdomen mainly present with diagnosis of biliary diseases, appendicitis, and abdominal wall hernias, but on many occasions the surgeon finds patients with acute abdomen of unclear cause, which make taking into account unsuspected pathologies that appear increasingly reported in the medical literature, such as some inflammatory pathologies as omental appendicitis, torsion of the omentum, complicated Meckel's diverticulum, obstructive conditions due to neoplastic lesions or internal hernias, and vascular (hepatic peliosis, splenic rupture, spontaneous hemoperitoneum, vasculitis). A search was conducted in Pub Med and Clinical Key, with the keywords: "causes, unexpected, and acute abdominal", finding a total of 44 articles published in the last five years, which were analyzed by identifying the main unexpected causes of acute abdomen.

Keywords : abdominal pain; abdomen; acute; etiology; diagnosis; inflammation; intestinal obstruction.

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