Atypical presentations of acute appendicitis

Abstract EN

Abdominal pain is a common complaint in children, virtually; every child will have abdominal pain at some point in his life.

However, most cases are mild, nonsurgical, functional, and do not need deep investigations.

For example; constipation, gastroenteritis and viral syndrome are one of common causes.

Nevertheless, serious causes of abdominal pain can be misleading and present with almost same complaint as per the mild causes.

Acute appendicitis is the most common surgical cause of abdominal pain in children.

Yet; Diagnosis is missed in 25% of cases mainly due to atypical presentation.

Here we report two cases of acute appendicitis.

The first case presented with a picture of acute gastroenteritis without a clear signs of acute appendicitis.

The other one was of a very rare presentation of acute appendicitis with acute urinary retention.