Acute appendicitis mimicking acute scrotum: a rare complication of a common abdominal inflammatory disease

• Autor(a) principal: Kelly Cristine de Lacerda Rodrigues Buzatti
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Outros Autores: Marcus Vinícius Capanema Gonçalves, Rodrigo Gomes da Silva, Beatriz Deoti e Silva Rodrigues
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFMG
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/1843/56201
• topic: Acute appendiciti; Appendectomy; Acute abdomen; Spermatic cord torsion; Acute scrotum; Apendicite; Apendicectomia; Abdomen agudo; Torção do cordão espermático; Escroto agudo

Introduction: Acute appendicitis is the most common surgical disease of the abdomen in clinical practice, affecting mainly young adults. It has a wide variety of clinical presentations, due to the anatomical variation of the cecal appendix. Its presentation as acute scrotum and scrotal abscess is quite rare and atypical, occurring mainly in young male patients with patent processus vaginalis.Case presentation: An 18-years-old male patient attended the emergency unit complaining of diffuse abdominal pain, fever and hyporexia for four days followed by inflammatory signs in the scrotum. He was taken to the operation room after diagnosis of scrotal and abdominal sepsis. During scrotum exploration, pus was found inside the right hemiscrotum com ing down from the groin and communicating with the abdominal cavity. The laparotomy found perforated appendicitis and peritonitis leading to the scrotal abscess. The abscess was drained, appendectomy was performed and the scrotal and abdominal cavity were washed with saline solution. Despite postoperative complications such as pneumonia and intra-abdominal abscess, the reported patient recovered and was discharged in the 44th postoperative day. Conclusion: Acute appendicitis can mimic acute scrotum and surgeons must have a high index of suspicion of this complication for diagnosing. This unusual clinical presentation may be challenging and can delay the diagnosis leading to perforated peritonitis