Endometriosis: a rare cause of small bowel obstruction

S. A. Khwaja, Khwaja SA, Samir A Khwaja, Rasheed Zakaria, Carneiro HA, Herman Anthony Carneiro, Herman Carneiro, Khwaja HA, Haris Khwaja, Haris A Khwaja
BMJ case reports · 2012 · vol. 2012 , pp. bcr0320125988 · doi:10.1136/bcr.03.2012.5988 · PMID:22891009 · PMC3433519 · W2143736109
article OA: bronze CC0 ⤵ 12 in-corpus citations
📄 Open PDF View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

This case report details a 44-year-old woman with acute small bowel obstruction ultimately diagnosed as being caused by stricturing endometriosis in the terminal ileum.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

Although endometriosis is a common condition in young women, symptomatic involvement of the small bowel is rare. The authors report the case of a 44-year-old lady initially thought to have irritable bowel syndrome who presented 1 month later with acute small bowel obstruction. A CT scan showed small bowel dilatation with a transition point in the ileum, but no distinct lesion. The patient had an exploratory laparotomy where an obstructing lesion in the terminal ileum and several enlarged mesenteric lymph nodes were identified. Consequently, a right hemicolectomy was performed. Pathology specimens showed multiple endometriotic foci in the bowel with stricturing of terminal ileum and appendiceal intussusception. This likely resulted in subocclusive episodes and intestinal obstruction. This case highlights the difficulty in establishing a preoperative diagnosis of endometriosis. Small bowel endometriosis should, therefore, be considered in the differential diagnosis of women of childbearing age who present with symptoms of obstruction.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

endometriosisbowel_endometriosisirritable_bowel_syndrome

MeSH descriptors

Appendix Colonic Diseases Endometriosis Ileal Diseases Intestinal Obstruction Intussusception Adult Colectomy Colonic Diseases Colonic Diseases Colonic Diseases Constriction, Pathologic Constriction, Pathologic Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometriosis Female Humans Ileal Diseases Ileal Diseases

Citation neighborhood

Papers in the corpus that this work cites (lower rings, blue) and that cite this one (upper rings, green). Dot size scales with the paper's in-corpus citation count — bigger dot = more influential within the endo/adeno field. Click a dot to open that paper. [ expand to 2 hops ] — adds papers reached through this work's immediate citers/citees. Heavier; up to 60 extra dots.

References (16)

Cited by (12)

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-08-10T06:11:17.106188+00:00
openalex
last seen: 2026-06-10T17:14:06.276822+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-05-13T22:16:04.919516+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK