Abstract:
Background: Intussusception (IS) is one of the most frequent causes of abdominal surgical
emergencies in young children. It occurs when one segment of bowel invaginates into the distal
bowel, resulting in venous congestion and bowel wall edema progressing to bowel necrosis and
gangrene if not treated. The causes of IS are idiopathic in most cases. The purpose of this study is to
review the prevalence of acute intussusception in under five years in JUMC and to analyze the mode
and outcomes of treatment
Methods: This is a four-year retrospective study of children aged under five years who were
admitted and treated for intussusception between January 2013 to January 2016 GC at JUMC,
southwest, Ethiopia. Information on the patients’ demographic characteristics, clinical presentation,
and month of occurrence as well as the operative findings and outcome were obtained from patient
charts and the operating theatre registry. Data was collected using checklist developed for this
purpose and entered and analyzed by SPSS version 23.0 software
Results: One hundred and nineteen cases of intussusception were admitted to JUMC over a four year
period (January 2013 to January 2016 GC), of which 106 charts were retrieved and analyzed. Males
dominated in the series. Age distribution showed that 63.2% were infants (<1years) and 83% of the
cases were children < 2years of age. Abdominal pain (100%), vomiting (83.9%), bloody mucoid
diarrhea (63.2%) and a mass palpated abdominally and/or rectally (12.3%) were the most
common modes of presentations, with the classic triad of abdominal pain, vomiting and bloody
mucoid diarrhea occurring in almost half of the cases (56.6%). The highest peak of presentation was
in the months of February to April with 40(37.7%) cases and in the months of July to August with
22(20.7%) cases. Most patients presented to our hospital after 24 hours of onset of illness and most
of them were from around Jimma town. Intraoperative, it was found that ileocolic intussusception
was the most common type and 103 patients (97.2%) had no pathologic lead point (idiopathic) while
only 3 cases (2.8%) had pathologic lead point. 68(64.2%) patients had successful simple reduction.
Post-operative complications occurred in 33(31.1 %) patients the most common of which was
surgical site infection 14(13.2 %) and there were 10 deaths.
Conclusion: Intussusception was more common in infants and majority of them presented during the
dry and wet season of the year. There was delayed presentation especially for those coming outside
of Jimma town with proportional increase in rate of operative management and bowel resection and
complications.
