Primary Cecal Pathologies Presenting as Acute Abdomen

The importance of cecal pathologies lie in the fact that being the first part of large intestine, any disease involving the cecum affects overall functioning of the large bowel. Primary cecal pathologies presenting as acute abdomen often pose a challenge to their optimal management due to requirement of urgent intervention in most cases and being a common source of misdiagnosis. These pathologies often mimic acute appendicitis and commonly misdiagnosed as one. This misdiagnosis can lead to under-treatment of the underlying pathology and this results in high morbidity and mortality associated with these conditions. So the accurate identification of such conditions is required so that the patients can be optimally managed and patient outcome can be improved.

Inclusion criteria

• All adult patients presenting in emergency department with acute abdomen were included in study in whom cecal pathology as the cause of acute abdomen was suspected clinically and/or on imaging and further confirmed per-operatively and/or on histopathological examination (HPE) or on imaging. Patients identified with primarily a cecal pathology who had acute pain abdomen as the initial symptom but who didn't presented immediately due to various reasons were also included in the study as it is a well-documented fact that patients in developing countries like India, especially those who live in rural areas or who are illiterate often resort to indigenous methods of treatment or take symptomatic treatment from local practitioners before presenting to a tertiary centre for definitive treatment. Also, only those patients who were operated within 24 hours of index admission in the emergency operation theatre (EOT) by a registrar or faculty member after initial resuscitation were included in the study.

Exclusion criteria

• Patients with sub-acute, intermittent or chronic pain; when predominant symptoms were attributable to some other cause even with concomitant presence of a cecal pathology; when predominant pathology was not cecal and patients with cecal pathology operated as an elective case were excluded from this study. Thus patients diagnosed to be having appendiceal stump blowout, perforation of base of appendix, ileocecal tuberculosis or intussusception were not included.