Reliability of Medical Imaging in the Pre-Therapeutic Assessment of Acute Intestinal Obstruction at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Du Point “G”

Abstract

Introduction: Acute intestinal obstruction is a serious pathology, a surgical emergency for which medical imaging plays an important role in the management. We initiated this work in order to study the contribution of imaging in the diagnosis of acute intestinal obstruction at the Point-G University Hospital. Patients and Methods: This was a prospective, descriptive and analytical study of 96 patients collected at the radiology and medical imaging department of CHU Point-G from January 2018 to January 2019. Results: The age of our patients varied from 11 to 86 years, with an average of 36 years old. There was a male predominance of 64.6% against 35.4% for women, i.e., a sex ratio of 1.82. Previous surgery was found in 61.5% of our patients. The pain was present in all patients. An unprepared abdominal X-ray was performed in 89.6% of patients. Hydroaerobic levels were found in 96.5% of patients. Abdominopelvic CT scans were performed on 12 patients, all of whom were diagnosed with occlusion. These positive diagnostic findings were consistent with intraoperative findings in 92% of cases. The causes were dominated by bridges in 46 patients and tumors in 9 patients. Signs of severity on CT were dominated by signs of distress of the upstream bile ducts in 8.3%. Exactly 8% of our patients spontaneously resumed transit, 91% received surgical treatment and 1% died before surgery. The outcome was favorable in 80 patients (83.3%) and poor with death in 16 patients (16.7%). Conclusion: Acute intestinal obstruction remains a serious pathology for which the X-ray of the PSA is often the only radiological examination performed in an emergency. However, abdominopelvic CT seems to us to be widely indicated thanks to its contribution both to the positive diagnosis and to the diagnosis of severity and etiology. However, this imaging technique is widely underused in our practice because of its high cost and lack of availability.