A young man with a 12 cm cyst of the spleen

Year 2014, Volume: 27 Issue: 2, 151 - 152, 20.05.2014

Metin Senol Hakan Özdemir Zehra Ünal Özdemir İbrahim Tayfun Şahiner

Abstract

A 45-year-old man was admitted to the general surgery

clinic with abdominal pain, especially on his left side. He

also complained about abdominal distension for the last

few months. Physical examination revealed both tenderness

and a mass in the left upper quadrant of the abdomen.

There were no other pathological findings. There were no

chronic diseases or surgery in his medical history.

In laboratory examinations, complete blood count

(CBC), biochemistry and urine tests were normal. There

was no sign for hypersplenism. On radiological

examination, the abdominal X-ray was normal but

abdominal ultrasonography (USG) and computed

tomography (CT) revealed a pure cystic mass in the spleen

which was 12 cm in radius with a thick wall structure that

was pushing the spleen superiorly and left kidney inferiorly

(Figure 1).

An operation was planned for the patient, who was

diagnosed as having a splenic cyst. Pneumococcus

vaccination administered to the patient preoperatively.

During the exploration through a median incision, it was

observed that in addition to the splenomegaly, the spleen

was attached to surrounding tissues. A total splenectomy

was performed without opening the cyst. The patient had

oral nutrition on the postoperative first day and he was

discharged on the postoperative fifth day. There were no

pathological findings at the patient’s first month follow-up

examination.

Keywords

cyst, spleen

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