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The term acute abdomen represents the rapid onset of severe symptoms that may indicate potentially life-threatening intra-abdominal pathology that requires urgent surgical assessmnet and sometimes intervention. Abdominal pain is usually a feature, but a pain-free acute abdomen can occur, particularly in older people, in children, in the immunocompromised, and in the last trimester of pregnancy.
Acute abdominal pain is a frequent emergency department presentation. Pain may be located in any quadrant of the abdomen and may be intermittent, sharp or dull, achy or piercing; it may radiate from a focal site and there may be associated symptoms such as nausea and vomiting. Immediate assessment should focus on distinguishing those cases of true acute abdomen that require urgent surgical intervention from those that do not, which can initially be managed conservatively. Data from the UK suggest that availability and/or access to an experienced surgeon reduces unnecessary admissions while appropriately managing or triaging patients.
The Most Common causes of Acute Abdomen are:
1 Adhesions
2 Incarcerated/strangulated hernia
3 Cholecystitis
4 Gastric ulcer
5 Appendicitis
6 Ectopic pregnancy
7 Pelvic inflammatory disease
8 Acute pancreatitis
9 Acute diverticulitis
10 Ulcerative colitis
11 Crohn's disease
12 Cholelithiasis
13 Gastrointestinal malignancy
14 Hepatic abscess
15 Fitz-Hugh Curtis syndrome
16 Mallory-Weiss tear
17 Abdominal wall haematoma
18 Hereditary Mediterranean fever
19 Typhilitis (neutropenic enterocolitis)
20 Narcotic withdrawal
21 Hepatitis
22 Gastroenteritis
23 Infectious colitis
24 Sickle cell crisis
25 Endometriosis
26 Testicular torsion
27 Kidney stones
28 Pyelonephritis
Emergency Surgery can be defined as surgery that is required to deal with an acute threat to life, organ, limb or tissue caused by external trauma, acute disease process, acute exacerbation of a chronic disease process, or complication of a surgical or other interventional procedure. The skills needed for emergency surgery include the ability to diagmoses appropriately and undertake those abdominal and soft tissue procedures that need to be performed within appropriate time.
