Acute segmental obstructing enteritis in children

Abstract

We studied a group of 15 children with acute segmental enteritis associated with intestinal obstruction. The disease is characterized by fever, leukocytosis, copious bilious vomiting, and severe abdominal pain with signs of intestinal obstruction. Exploration revealed varying degrees of segmental ischemic change in the small bowel, but surgery seemed to be unnecessary in most cases. Antibiotics were effective in nonoperative cases. The clinical illness lasted 10-14 days. The disease was self-limited, and no mortality was found in our series. To our knowledge, this is the first report of this disease entity in Chinese children.