2019 Volume 39 Issue 4 Pages 727-731
A 75-year-old man, with no past surgical history, presented with abdominal distention. He was admitted to our hospital with a diagnosis of small bowel obstruction (SBO). In the abdominal CT, an oval foreign body that caused the SBO was found in the ileum. His symptoms improved conservatively and he was discharged on the seventh hospital day. However, five months after the discharge, his SBO symptoms relapsed and he was hospitalized again. CT findings revealed a foreign body in the ileum similar to that at the time of the previous hospitalization. We performed laparoscopic surgery on the fifth hospital day because there was no improvement with conservative treatment. A pickled plum stone found in the partially resected intestinal tract with inflammatory hypertrophy and ulceration. He was discharged on the seventh day after surgery with good progress and has been followed up to present without any bowel obstruction symptoms. It was conceivable that the stone had remained in the ileum for at least 5 months and it could have caused intestinal perforation if it had been left in the intestine. We concluded that, for SBO cases in which excretion of the causative stone cannot be confirmed, an operation should be performed.
