Bowel intussusception in adults: a report of three interesting cases and current trends for diagnosis and surgical management.

BACKGROUND

Bowel intussusception in adults remains a rare and constant diagnostic challenge for surgeons. It has an incidence of around 2-3 new cases per million per year, and its primary cause is benign or malignant neoplasms of the small bowel and colon. This report aims to outline the importance of high clinical suspicion regarding intussusception in adults presenting with abdominal pain in the emergency department.  Case report: This is a retrospective review of three cases of adult ileocecal intussusception that were treated in a single surgical department in three years (2015-2018). All patients underwent right hemicolectomy in keeping with the principles of surgical oncology. Each patient had a different clinical presentation, while, in terms of the underlining pathology, the first had an adenocarcinoma of the ascending colon, the second an adenocarcinoma of the ileocecal valve, and the third one an inflammatory fibroid polyp of the ileocecal valve, also known as Vanek's tumor.

CONCLUSION

Large bowel intussusception in adults is quite an interesting entity, not only for its rarity but for its non-specific and atypical clinical presentation as well. High suspicion from the clinician's part and availability of a computed tomography scan is the key to diagnosis. It is not unusual for imaging modalities to be unable to identify the cause of the intussusception. Thus, surgery is always the preferred method of treatment, as, more often than not, a neoplasm of the small or the large bowel is the underlining pathology.  HIPPOKRATIA 2019, 23(1): 37-41.