Acute pelvic inflammatory disease as a rare cause of acute small bowel obstruction

Introduction: Small bowel obstruction (SBO) is a common presentation to emergency abdominal surgery. The most frequent causes of SBO are congenital, postoperative adhesions, abdominal wall hernia, internal hernia and malignancy.

Patients: A 27-year-old woman was hospitalized because of acute abdominal pain, blockage of gases and stools associated with vomiting. Abdominal computed tomography showed an acute small bowel obstruction without any obvious etiology. In view of important abdominal pain and the lack of clear diagnosis, an explorative laparoscopy was performed. Diagnostic of pelvic inflammatory disease was established and was comforted by positive PCR for Chlamydia Trachomatis.

Results: Acute small bowel obstruction resulting from acute pelvic inflammatory disease, emerging early after infection, without any clinical or X-ray obvious signs was not described in the literature yet. This infrequent acute SBO etiology but must be searched especially when there is no other evident cause of obstruction in female patients. Early laparoscopy is mostly advised when there are some worrying clinical or CT scan signs.