Traumatic appendicitis in minor blunt abdominal injury

✍ Scribed by Konstantinos A Paschos; Konstantinos Boulas; Apostolos Liapis; Eleftheria Georgiou; Xenos Vrakas

• Book ID: 114826507
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2012
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 295 KB
• Volume: 24
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1742-6731
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1742-6723.2012.01557.x

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Trauma has been reported as a cause of appendicitis on several cases in the literature. The present study reports the relationship between blunt abdominal trauma (BAT) of injury severity score less than 4 and appendicitis. A 17‐year‐old girl developed appendicitis after a minor BAT. An ecchymosis at the right lower quadrant misled the diagnosis, which was made 1 day later. Laparotomy revealed an inflamed appendix, a few enlarged mesenteric lymph nodes, contusion, as well as punctuated bleeding sites of the caecum. Moreover, based on a brief literature review, the different pathophysiological mechanisms and the difficulties of diagnosis of this entity are discussed. It is suggested that appendicitis should be considered as a possibility in the setting of right lower quadrant pain following minor BAT, when there is clinical suspicion of an inflammatory process within the right iliac fossa.