[Fatal infection after splenectomy despite reimplantation of splenic tissue]

A fatal case of a postsplenectomy sepsis is presented which occurred in a 5-year-old boy 11 month following splenectomy due to trauma and reimplantation of splenic tissue. The patient died 4 h after admission to the hospital. The post mortem revealed an encephalitis and a sepsis although splenic regenerates were found in the omentum pouch. Our report increases the number of cases described to date in the literature to a total of 18. Autologous reimplantation of splenic tissue does not offer complete protection against over-whelming infection.