Idiopathic acute chylous peritonitis during pregnancy, mimicking perforated acute appendicitis: A case report

Chylous ascites (CA) is an extremely rare presentation in pregnancy and poses a diagnostic challenge in clinical practice. There have only been a few case reports of CA in pregnancy with the majority of cases found incidentally at the time of caesarean section or in the context of pancreatitis.

A 36-year-old female who was 13 weeks pregnant had clinically presented right iliac fossa pain with peritonitis and had signs of sepsis. Once other potential sources of sepsis were excluded, had proceeded to diagnostic laparoscopy performed by the treating consultant given there were no appropriate out-of-hours imaging modalities available.

This case report hopes to advocate for the effective intervention of a diagnostic laparoscopy in this setting and other important considerations for management during first trimester pregnancy. Upon diagnosis the patient was put onto a medium chain fatty acid diet with excellent outcomes post operatively and at the outpatient follow up. The case report has been reported in line with the SCARE 2020 criteria [11].

Chylous ascites is a rare finding and additionally is even more rare to cause peritonism. What we found most interesting in this case is that in the absence of any other potential sources of infection, how chylous ascites not only presented with peritonism but prompted a septic response. Another pertinent issue is that in pregnancy we are limited with investigative options and therefore diagnosis will depend on the clinical presentation and decision for prompt diagnostic/therapeutic laparoscopy should be strongly considered.