Appendiceal Endometriosis: A Rare Cause of Acute Appendicitis

Georgios Koimtzis
In: Journal of Surgical Case Reports and Images · 2020 · vol. 3(5) , pp. 01–03 · doi:10.31579/2690-1897/040 · W3133075132
article OA: hybrid CC0
📄 Open PDF View on OpenAlex View at publisher

Abstract

Background: Acute appendicitis is the most common cause of acute abdomen. The etiology has not been defined clearly but potential causes are fecoliths, lymphoid hyperplasia and malignancies. However, an extremely uncommon cause of acute appendicitis is endometriosis which leads to dilemmas in the diagnostic process. Case report: A 21-year-old Caucasian female patient presented in the Emergency department complaining of acute progressive abdominal pain in the right lower quadrant. The physical examination revealed signs consistent with acute appendicitis. The patient underwent diagnostic laparoscopy, which revealed early inflammation of the appendix and thus was subjected to appendicectomy. Histologic examination revealed endometriosis of the appendix. Conclusion: The presented case emphasizes on how endometriosis can affect only the appendix without any involvement of the reproductive organs. A high index of clinical suspicion is required especially in women of reproductive age who present with periodic chronic pain associated with their menstrual cycle. Nonetheless, this can only be confirmed through diagnostic laparoscopy and histologic examination, which also provides the definite cure of the disease.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

endometriosis

Citation neighborhood (no data yet)

We don't have any in-corpus citations linked to this paper yet. The paper's references may be in our DB but unresolved to ``paper_id`` (resolution happens at ingest when the cited DOI matches a row we already have). Run the cross-source citation reconcile pass to retry.

References (24)

Source provenance

openalex
last seen: 2026-06-10T17:14:06.276822+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK