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Recurrent abdominal pain in a woman with a wandering spleen

H H Tan1, L L P L Ooi, D Tan

  • 1Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Singapore General Hospital, Outram Road, Singapore 169608. mhyhui@gmail.com

Singapore Medical Journal
|March 27, 2007
PubMed

A 28-year-old Malay woman presented with recurrent abdominal pain for five years. She had delivered her child seven months earlier. She was found to have bicytopenia, with a haemoglobin level of 7.9 g/dL and a platelet count of 85 x 10(9)/L. Computed tomography revealed a wandering spleen. Complications of a wandering spleen, for which splenectomy is advocated, include functional asplenia (due to torsion of the splenic pedicle), splenic infarction or splenic vessel thrombosis. A splenectomy was performed and at operation, splenomegaly with a long mesentery was found. Splenic histology was negative for malignancy. The bicytopenia resolved postoperatively, and she remains well.

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