Acute Abdomen

Condition where the patient presents with severe pain abdomen, distension (bloating) and is usually very sick .. a very broad and general definition.
Cause could be extremely varied.

Here the patient was an elderly, immunocompromised gentleman, who presented with 2 days of severe abdominal pain, vomiting and inability to pass flatus(gas).

He was admitted to the ICU, evaluated, underwent CT scan which showed signs of a rupture of an abdominal organ releasing gas. We took him up for emergency surgery and found a perforation in his diseased small bowel due to which he had a lot of pus in the abdominal cavity, making him sick.

We had to resect and rejoin a part of his small bowel, a major surgery and he had a long but nearly uneventful recovery.
His physical fitness and strength helped him get better and he got away with this.

There are times, when the bowel is so diseased that a rejoin is not advisable, leading to a diversion of the bowel onto the abdominal skin, most often temporary, sometimes, permanent.