Category: Abdominal cases

Abdominal #19

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A 79-year-old female patient:
– Presented with abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting
– Previous history of cholecystitis and pancreatitis
– Laboratory findings:
*Elevated C-reactive protein and white blood cell levels

What do you see?

Pneumobilia (arrow)

Cholecystoduodenal fistula (red arrow)
Gastric (blue arrow) and duodenal (green arrow) distension

Gallstone located in the proximal jejunal segment (red arrows)
Gastric distension (blue arrows)

What is your diagnosis?

Gallstone ileus


Abdominal CT images obtained two years earlier show that the gallstone is in the gallbladder (arrows).

Teaching points:

* Gallstone ileus is a cause of mechanical small bowel obstruction that generally affects the elderly and has high mortality. It is a rare complication of chronic cholecystitis. It develops when a gallstone passes through a cholecystoenteric fistula leading to small bowel obstruction.

* Gallstones most commonly become impacted in the distal ileum.

* The classical imaging findings on abdominal radiographs form Rigler triad: pneumobilia, small bowel obstruction, and ectopic radio-opaque gallstone

* CT is the most frequently used imaging modality for the diagnosis as it demonstrates the rim-calcified or total-calcified ectopic gallstone, abnormal gallbladder with air collection, presence of air-fluid level, biliary-enteric fistula, and transition point of small bowel obstruction. However, only a minority of gallstones are calcified. Therefore, they may be overlooked in intestinal lumen, which may result in misdiagnosis. Multiplanar reformatted CT images can be helpful to locate the migration site of the ectopic stones.

* Treatment: Surgery with removal of gallbladder stone is the definitive treatment.

In our case, the patient underwent surgery. Enterotomy with gallstone removal was performed. According to the operation note, the gallstone was located in the jejunum 20 cm distal to the ligament of Treitz.

Abdominal #18

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75-year-old female:
– Day 4 post Whipple procedure
– Ongoing abdominal pain with increased inflammatory markers and slightly increased lactate levels

What do you see?

– Post-operative changes following partial pancreatectomy and duodenojejunostomy (partially shown)
– Prominent mesenteric nodes
– Partially occlusive thrombus of the superior mesenteric vein (best seen on axial slice) extending to a large jejunal branch (seen on coronal slice)

What is the most likely diagnosis?

Partial SMV occlusion as a complication to recent Whipple procedure

Abdominal #17

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Known patient with recently diagnosed poorly differentiated vaginal carcinoma with staging FDG PET/CT study. What is the study showing?

What do you see?

– A hypermetabolic lower vaginal lesion representing the known vaginal neoplasm associated with a larger hypermetabolic uterine body neoplastic lesion suggesting synchronous malignant process
– Multiple hypermetabolic enumerable bilateral lung deposits associated with a single right lower para-tracheal nodal deposit

Abdominal #16

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What do you see on the following images?

Click here to see the answer

TB cervical lymphadenitis

Mild progression in size of multiple necrotic lymph nodes in bilateral supraclavicular, axillary regions, at all anterior and posterior cervical chain (more prominent at right side lower anterior cervical chain)

Abdominal #11

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Clinical Information

– 53-year-old male
– Left adrenal nodule was incidentally found on a CT scan
– MRI was performed for better characterization

What are the Imaging Findings

– Left adrenal nodule with loss of signal intensity on out-of-phase image

What is the most likely diagnosis?

Adrenal adenoma:
– The most important characteristic feature is the presence of intracellular lipid.
– Chemical shift imaging is the most reliable technique for diagnosing adrenal adenoma: most of them demonstrate a loss of signal intensity on out-of-phase MR images.

Abdominal #10

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82-yearold patient:
– Presenting with hematuria

What is the most likely diagnosis?

Enhancing mass in the left renal pelvis, most likely TCC

What is the treatment?

Left total nephroureterectomy and bladder cuff excision

Microscopy result: Transitional Cell Carcinoma of 2,5 cm in the renal pelvis, low grade.
TNM classification Pyelum-Ureter (8th edition UICC): pTa.

Teaching Points

Teaching points

– The vast majority of renal pelvis and ureter tumours are transitional cell carcinoma (> 90%), the remainder of tumours are squamous cell carcinoma (< 10%) and adenocarcinoma (< 1%) Transitional cell carcinoma much more commonly occurs in the bladder than in the renal pelvis or ureter - Synchronous and metachronous tumours are frequent because TCC is caused by toxic exposure through for example cigarette smoking - TCC of the renal pelvis can spread to the kidney and intraluminal seeding to more caudal parts of the ureter and to the bladder is common => always look for other space occupying lesions

– For these reasons, an excretory phase is always useful when a kidney mass is suspected, as TCC’s represent 10 to 15% of renal tumours

– CT scan protocol: non enhanced CT, enhanced CT (70-90 sec), delayed phase (10-15 mins)