JEJUNAL ADENOCARCINOMA: A CASE REPORT

Abstract

Tumors of the small intestine are extremely rare, and clinical signs and symptoms are nonspecific, resulting in prolongation of the diagnosis process and subsequently worsening the outcome of the treatment. In addition to non-specific symptomatology, additional difficulty in diagnosing is the very inaccessibility of the jejunum through endoscopic techniques. The following is a review of the case of a female patient with jejunum carcinoma. CASE REPORT. A 64-year-old patient with nonspecific symptoms of fatigue, weight loss and sore pain in the stomach initially hospitalized due to anemic syndrome. An endoscopic evaluation was performed, and the fining was chronic gastritis. The patient was prescribed with iron supplementation therapy and was sent home. Within a month, the fore mentioned symptoms started to intensify, and the patient was hospitalized at the General Hospital in Skopje, where extensive investigations were conducted. Upper digestive endoscopy was made, and the finding again only showed chronic gastritis. Due to lack of findings, the doctors performed abdominal ultrasonography that indicated only a bolded intestinal segment with a thick wall of 9mm in the projection of the left flexure to the descending colon. The need for additional investigations grew and computed tomography with contrast of the abdomen and small pelvis was performed. The finding of the computed tomography was in favor of an irregular intestinal segment in the projections of the jejunal convolutions, with a thickened heterogenic wall and pathological post-contrast coloring. Due to the need for correlation with other trials, MRI was performed, and its finding was highly suspected of a tumor change in the jejunum, but an inflammatory disease was not excluded. Because of this finding, the patient was sent to the Department of Digestive Surgery at the same facility. From a surgical point of view, the patient was treated with an upper medial laparotomy, which made it possible for the tumor to be released from its surroundings. The surgery and after surgery course and the patient’s condition were all as expected. The patient was in a stable general condition after the surgery, and she was sent home. The pathophysiological finding resulted in jejunal adenocarcinoma (Latin adenocarcinoma intestinijejuni). After the pathophysiological finding was obtained, the patient was referred to an oncologist for eventual adjuvant therapy. DISCUSSION. Small intestine carcinoma is a specific clinical and surgical entity, which is often diagnosed in an already overdue phase. This is due in part to the non-cohesive symptomatology, but largely due to the still insufficiently sophisticated detection methods. Because of this enigmatic nature of these carcinomas, it may be necessary to think of a special team in the digestive surgery departments, which would solely work on this pathology, in order to speed up diagnosis and improve the outcome of the treatment for the patient.