Meckel’s diverticulum: a cause of recurrent gastrointestinal bleeding

Abstract

Background: Obscure gastrointestinal bleedings accounting for 5%-30% of all gastrointestinal bleedings continue to be a challenge and usually originate from the small bowel.Clinical case: We present a case of a female patient hospitalized with signs of gastrointestinal bleeding three times within 3 months. We could not identify the source of bleeding using standard methods, such as abdominal computed tomography and ultrasonography, esophagogastroduodenoscopy, and colonoscopy. We detected a Meckel’s diverticulum during a diagnostic laparoscopy and performed wedge resection of the small bowel. Histopathology results revealed an acute progressive ulcer in the wall of the small bowel diverticulum.Conclusions: Diagnostic laparoscopy is one of the available minimally invasive procedures, which in some cases can successfully identify the source of small bowel bleeding.

Keywords

• obscure gastrointestinal bleeding
• meckel’s diverticulum