Advocating for routine post-natal surveillance and urgent neonatal inguinal hernia repair

Abstract

Inguinal hernias are more common in preterm and neonates and incidence of incarceration are reported to be more in the first 6 months of life. Strangulation follows incarceration and various incarcerated and strangulated contents having been reported in the sac. The fistulation of the herniated content through the scrotal skin is quite rare with only a few reported cases. We present the case of entero-scrotal fistula in a neonate managed with staged repair along with a brief review of the literature. A 27-days-old, full-term male presented with faecal discharge from the right scrotum. He had no tell-tale signs of obstructed hernia. A faecal fistulous opening was located in the right hemi-scrotum. The terminal ileum was seen as the content with an antimesenteric perforation, divided ileostomy and scrotal debridement was done and later ileo-ascending anastomosis was performed electively. Neonatal hernias should be considered an urgency and we advocate early surgery. The resource-limited setting and poor post-natal surveillance may have added to the worries. In our case, swelling and fistulation occurred in a very brief period of 36 h. We managed the child with a diversion stoma followed by ileo-ascending anastomosis later.

Keywords

• early diagnosis
• parental education
• post-natal care
• quality of health care
• scrotal fistula