[Small intestinal hemorrhage due to rare etiology. Diagnostic difficulties and therapeutic approaches]

Understanding of the pathogenesis, diagnosis, and treatment of lower GI bleeding has drastically changed during the last 50 years, but it continues to be a frequent cause of hospital admission and also a factor in hospital morbidity and mortality. Acute lower gastrointestinal hemorrhage (ALGIH) represents only 20% of the GI bleeding and the small intestine is the site of hemorrhage in about 1% of cases. Although in the last four decades, diagnostic methods for locating the precise bleeding point improved greatly, still the adequate localization of the lesion is very difficult to achieve through algorithmic approaches. We performed a clinical study and we retrospectively analyzed 5 patients (mean age = 59,8 years, 1 female) who had a surgical intervention for acute lower GI hemorrhage in the last decade, in order to emphasize diagnosis difficulties when the bleeding arises from small lesions in the small bowel that is not easily accessible for direct visualisation. Surgery was the treatment of choice in every case consisting in segmental resections of the involved small bowel, along with viscerolysis and exploratory gastro-jejunostoma. The mortality rate was 20% (1 postoperative death of cardiac etiology). There have been no specific postoperative complications in the other four patients and a good outcome was reported. The diagnosis is particularly difficult and when colonic and upper gastrointestinal evaluations fail to identify a source of bleeding, a small intestinal source should be considered. We can conclude that the most important factor in the management of ALGIH is determination of specific localization of the lesion.