Abstract
The patient was a 65-year-old woman with chief complaints of abdominal pain and diarrhea. Three years earlier, in 1987, she had undergone abdomino-perineal resection of the rectum for rectal cancer. Abdominal ultrasonography and computed tomography revealed a tumor developed from the mesenterium. The operation was performed on August 20, 1990. A tumor was found in the mesenterium between Treitz's ligament and the left common iliac artery. We performed tumor extirpation with resection of the small intestine near Treitz's ligament. The resected elastic hard tumor, measuring 10×8×5cm, showed a smooth surface, whitish and solid cut surface, and was histologically diangosed as intra-abdominal desmoid tumor of the mesenterium invading into the muscular layer of the duodenum. This is a very rare case of intra-abdominal desmoid tumor without polyposis coli. Since 1981, only 27 such cases have been reported in the Japanese literature.
