Primary Lesser Omentum Torsion - An Extremely Rare Cause of Acute Abdomen and a Very Uncommon Subtype of Intraperitoneal Focal Fat Infarction (IFFI): Case Report and Review of the Literature

Abstract

We report a case of a 17-year-old patient who presented with sharp epigastric pain and features of acute abdomen and was finally diagnosed and treated during laparotomy where a lesser omentum torsion was detected. Such cases are extremely rare while the clinical manifestations mimic other causes of acute abdomen. On the other side, the technological progress of the imaging techniques has allowed during the last years, the unification of all these entities which present with focal fat tissue necrosis such as torsion and/or infarction of the greater/lesser omentum or an epiploic appendage, under the term Intraperitoneal Focal Fat Infarction (IFFI), due to their common features, encouraging parallelly the conservative treatment due to the spontaneous self-limiting evolution in most cases. The report is followed by a review of the literature regarding the diagnostic means and choices of treatment of these rare conditions.




J Med Cases. 2013;4(7):499-503
doi: https://doi.org/10.4021/jmc1317w