Acute scrotal pain and swelling in children: a surgical emergency

The pediatric patient with acute scrotal pain and swelling can pose a difficult diagnostic problem. The therapeutic approach to these patients, however, need not be difficult. Despite the advent of Doppler ultrasonic equipment and technetium pertechnetate scanning to differentiate torsion of the testes from other causes of acute scrotal pain and swelling, the policy of emergency scrotal exploration in nearly all such pediatric patients seems to be most appropriate. The exception to this rule might be the rare child with frank pyuria and/or urinary tract infection in whom the diagnosis of epididymo-orchitis is suggested by all parameters.