Acute abdomen is a life threatening condition.
Acute abdominal pain is the pain that appears out of the blue or after trauma and the intensity rises in hours and is located in any part of the abdomen. It demands urgent attention and treatment.
The acute abdomen may be caused by an infection, inflammation, vascular occlusion, or obstruction.
The patient will associate nausea or vomiting, sometimes fever if infection is present. Most patients with an acute abdomen appear ill.
The physician needs information about the Age, Sex, other illnesses, past medical history, other symptoms and what happened, were there any traumas? did the patient ate something? What triggered the symptom(s)? in order to guide him to a final diagnostic.
The most frequent diagnostics are appendicitis, perforated peptic ulcer, acute pancreatitis, ruptured sigmoid diverticulum, ovarian torsion, volvulus, ruptured aortic aneurysm, lacerated spleen or liver and ischemic bowel.
As we can see in the figure above, the abdomen has 9 quadrants. According to the location of the pain, the physician gets information about the organ that might be affected. (Of course there are illnesses that act weirdly like appendicitis where the pain usually starts in the Epigastric region and the appendix is located in the Right iliac region.
Acute abdomen in many cases requires surgery, the cause must be removed and the abdomen must be cleaned.
Acute Abdominal Pain is a symptom that require immidialaty medical attention, if you want to self diagnose, do it on the way to the Emergency Room (ER).
RESTLESS DUCK 