Here’s a story to help remember some of the details of intussusception. Remember to try and really picture this event, in your garden. If you can use children that you’ve seen or know, it will help make the story stick better. If you can make it even more ridiculous than I have, then go for it – the weirder the better!
Two boys and a girl are playing in the garden at a family barbecue. The boys are 6 months and 18 months old, and the girl is 12 months old.
- Typically affects children between 6 and 18 months
- Boys are twice as affected as girls
They’re all dancing, and doing a special dance where they have to jump as high as they can, and bring their knees up to their chest. As they’re doing this, they all turn completely white and start rolling around on the floor complaining of pain in their abdomen.
- Child complains of abdominal pain
- Often characteristically draws knees up to chest
- Pale
- Characteristic ‘Dance’s Sign’
One of the boys then does a poo. Unfortunately all he’s been eating is jelly, so he blasts jelly all over the other two. They both vomit, but since they’ve just been eating sausages from the barbecue, there’s now jelly and sausages all over the garden.
- Vomiting
- Blood-stained faeces (like jelly)
- Sausage like mass palpable in the lower right quadrant
The children then all start screaming, but they’re screaming at such a high pitch that it’s causing all the windows to smash, so you then have to go on a trip to Target to buy replacements.
- Ultrasound is the primary imaging modality
- Characteristic ‘target’ sign seen
The Background
Intussusception is a medical emergency in which part of the bowel collapses into the adjacent part like a telescope (or extendable selfie-stick for those born after 1994). It can lead to obstruction and perforation, and then sepsis and shock.
The reason it’s dangerous is because the segment of bowel that is drawn in can have its blood supply cut off, and become necrotic and then perforate. The ischaemic bowel loses its mucosa into the bowel lumen, and this forms the characteristic ‘red jelly’. In reality, any type of blood in the stool should have intussusception on the differential diagnosis, especially if the child is between 6 and 18 months.
Causes
A variety of things can cause intussusception, although how it is that they do it isn’t well understood. It is thought that enlarged lymphoid tissue after an infection may play a role, and this would also explain why intussusception is relatively rare in the first three months of life, while the infant is still protected by passive immunity.
The different types include:
- ileocolic (90%)
- ileoileocolic (less common)
- ileoileal (rare)
- colocolic (rare)
Diagnosis
The diagnosis is made based on:
- clinical examination
- PR exam can be very helpful in children
- history
- Dance’s sign
- emptiness in the lower right quadrant
- sausage shape in right upper quadrant
- Ultra-sound Scan
- diagnostic imaging modality of choice
- gives a characteristic target shape
If you google intussusception you get some awesome radiographs
I can’t put any on here because I don’t own them
sad face
unicyclemedic 