Symptomatic Meckel's diverticulum in pediatric patients—case reports and systematic review of the literature

  • Introduction: Our aim was to highlight the characteristics of pediatric Meckel's diverticulum with a special focus on its complications. Methods: We report a group of seven patients with Meckel's diverticulum and its resection from the Department of Pediatric Surgery between 2012 and 2017. We reviewed all patient records, clinical presentation, and intraoperative findings. The diagnosis was confirmed by surgery and pathology. For a systematic literature review, we used PubMed, Medline and Google Scholar search engines to locate articles containing terms such as Meckel's diverticulum, children, pediatric, complications and symptomatic. We included article reporting on case series in English and German on pediatric patients only. Results: All included patients (n = 7) were symptomatic. Some patients showed isolated symptoms, and others presented with a combination of symptoms that consisted of abdominal pain, bloody stool or vomiting. The median age of our seven cases was 3.5 years, including 4 male and 3 female patients. Intestinal obstruction was the most common complication; it was seen in 5 out of 7 patients (intussusception in 4 cases, volvulus in 1 case). Ectopic gastric tissue was identified in 3 cases, and inclusion of pancreatic tissue was observed in 1 case. The literature review identified 8 articles for a total of 641 patients aged between 1 day and 17 years and a male:female ratio of 2.6:1. From this group, 528 patients showed clinical symptoms related to Meckel's diverticulum. The most common symptom was abdominal pain and bloody stool. The most common surgical finding in symptomatic patients was intestinal obstruction (41%), followed by intestinal hemorrhage (34%). Complications such as perforation (10%) and diverticulitis (13%) were less frequently reported. Heterotopic tissue was confirmed on histopathology in 53% of all patients enclosing gastric, pancreatic, and both gastric and pancreatic mucosae. In one case, large intestine tissue could be found. Overall, one death was reported. Conclusion: The presented case series and literature review found similar clinical presentations and complications of Meckel's diverticulum in children. Intestinal obstruction and bleeding are more frequent than inflammation in pediatric Meckel's diverticulum. Bowel obstruction is the leading cause for complicated Meckel's diverticulum in patients younger than 12 years.

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Author:Daniel KeeseGND, Udo RolleORCiDGND, Stefan GfrörerORCiDGND, Henning C. FiegelORCiDGND
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-510862
DOI:https://doi.org/10.3389/fped.2019.00267
ISSN:2296-2360
Pubmed Id:https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31294008
Parent Title (English):Frontiers in Pediatrics
Publisher:Frontiers Media
Place of publication:Lausanne
Contributor(s):Kenneth K. Y. Wong
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Year of Completion:2019
Date of first Publication:2019/06/26
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2019/10/10
Tag:Meckel’s diverticulum; case reports; children; complications; surgery
Volume:7
Issue:Art. 267
Page Number:9
First Page:1
Last Page:9
Note:
Copyright © 2019 Keese, Rolle, Gfroerer and Fiegel. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
HeBIS-PPN:455690995
Institutes:Medizin / Medizin
Dewey Decimal Classification:6 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften / 61 Medizin und Gesundheit / 610 Medizin und Gesundheit
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Open-Access-Publikationsfonds:Medizin
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - Namensnennung 4.0