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'Crohn'z meanz Heinz': foreign body inflammatory mass mimicking Crohn's disease

R Visagan1, R Grossman, P A Dimitriadis

  • 1General Surgery Department, Heatherwood and Wexham Park Hospital, Slough, UK. visagan@doctors.org.uk

BMJ Case Reports
|June 11, 2013
PubMed

The authors present a patient with a presumed diagnosis of Crohn's disease for 6 years turning out to be an unusual inflammatory mass caused by ileal perforation due to a foreign body. When surgical intervention became necessary for admissions with recurrent obstruction, laparoscopy revealed an inflammatory mass in the terminal ileum, exposing two pieces of plastic bearing the word 'Heinz'. Resection of the inflammatory mass led to the complete resolution of symptoms. Histology from the operative specimen showed no features of Crohn's disease. There were no granulomas and no fissuring ulcers. This case highlights that an inflammatory mass in the small intestine caused by the perforation of ingested foreign body can mimic Crohn's disease. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a synthetic plastic packaging causing ileo-caecal junctional perforation mimicking Crohn's disease.

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