Caecum perforation after renal transplantation: a case report and review of literature

Gastrointestinal (GI) complication used to be the second most common complication in renal transplant patients after infection (Bardaxoglou et al. in Transpl Int 6(3):148–152, 1993). Review of transplant registry reveals that GI complication is no longer the second most common type of complication after renal transplant, but that it is still a common cause of significant amount of deaths in renal transplant recipients (De Bartolomeis et al. in Transpl Proc 37(6):2504–2506, 2005). In a study of 1,515 adults with severe GI complication after renal transplant, Sarkio et al. (Transpl Int 17(9):505–510, 2004) reported that gastroduodenal ulcers followed by colon perforation were the two biggest groups of GI complications during the first year after renal transplantation. Colonic perforation is estimated to occur in about 1 % of all cases of renal transplant patients, and it does predispose to potentially fatal complication. About 50 % of all colonic perforation is due to complication of acute inflammation of diverticular disease (Bardaxoglou et al. in Transpl Int 6(3):148–152, 1993; Guice et al. in Am J Surg 138(1):43–48, 1979; Koneru et al. in Arch Surg 125(5):610–613, 1990; Coccolini et al. in Transpl Proc 41(4):1189–1190, 2009). This is particularly so because these patients were previously exposed to uremia before transplantation which alters their protein metabolism hence interfering with tissue healing there after (Carson et al. in Ann Surg 188(1):109–113, 1978). GI complications including colon perforation after renal transplantation have effect on a patient’s long-term survival (Gil-Vernet et al. in Transpl Proc 39(7):2190–2193, 2007). Despite this, the role of renal transplantation medication compared to anatomic anomaly in GI complication has been equivocal.