The causes of acute abdominal pain are numerous, often involving multiple departments, but they can be simply divided into abdominal organ diseases and extra-abdominal organ diseases. This section focuses on elderly internal medicine acute abdominal pain.
1、Peptic ulcer
With the rapid development of population aging, the incidence of elderly peptic ulcers has a tendency to increase. However, due to its atypical clinical manifestations, it often presents with obstruction and perforation as the initial symptoms of consultation, with many and serious complications, which should be paid attention to.
2、Gastric lithiasis
Common in the elderly, especially after vagotomy or subtotal gastrectomy, it may be related to reduced gastric motility and is also commonly found in elderly diabetic patients. When a gastric stone blocks the pylorus, it can cause high-level obstruction.
3、Gastric volvulus
More common in the elderly, due to the relaxation of the ligaments supporting the stomach, it is prone to gastric volvulus.
4、Vascular diseases
In the elderly, due to atherosclerosis, it often causes colonic ischemia, known as ischemic colitis. In severe cases, due to colonic ischemia, gangrene may occur, commonly affecting the entire colon, with the splenic flexure being the most severe. This is a sudden, difficult-to-diagnose severe abdominal disease.
5、Crohn's disease (limiting enteritis)
Commonly affects the terminal ileum or colon, characterized by full-thickness inflammation, with linear ulcers and granulomas and jumping disease areas, causing obstruction and perforation due to hyperplasia.
6、Gallbladder and biliary tract diseases
Acute cholecystitis often occurs on the basis of chronic lesions.9More than 0% are accompanied by cholelithiasis, and it is induced due to the impaction of gallstones in the cystic duct or the neck of the gallbladder.
7Pancreatic disease
The main diseases of the pancreas in the elderly are blunt trauma, biliary pancreatitis, and cancer.
8Liver disease liver abscess
They are divided into bacterial abscesses and amebic abscesses. Amebic abscesses are the most common extraintestinal amebiasis. Bacterial liver abscesses are caused by the invasion of pyogenic bacteria into the liver. If two types of liver abscesses are not treated in a timely and effective manner, they can break into the pleural cavity to form pleurisy; if they break into the abdominal cavity, they can form acute peritonitis.
9Gastrointestinal tumors
is the second leading cause of death in the elderly after heart disease.2is the second leading cause of death in the elderly after heart disease. Common ones include:
①Gastric cancer.
②Small intestine tumors, often occur in50 to70-year-old people, the most common are carcinoid tumors, followed by adenocarcinoma, lymphoma, and leiomyosarcoma.
③Colorectal tumors, the incidence of colorectal cancer is in40 years begins to rise, peaking at80 years, rectal cancer is more common in men, while colon cancer is almost equal in both men and women.
④Pancreatic cancer, greater than75years, the incidence rate is 2 times that of the general population.10times.
⑤Liver tumors, the liver is the most common site of metastasis of other tumors. Primary liver cancer is rare in America and Western Europe, but it is most common in Africa and Asia,90% of primary liver cancer originate from hepatocytes, known as hepatocellular carcinoma or liver cancer;5% to10% originate from the bile duct, known as cholangiocarcinoma, or a mixed type known as cholangiohepatocellular carcinoma.
⑥Gallbladder tumors, there are reports that gallbladder malignant tumors account for 0. in patients who have undergone cholecystectomy.2% to5%, most of which are60 to70-year-old women, adenocarcinoma accounts for80%,20% are squamous cell carcinomas. In the late stage of various cancers, the main causes of acute abdominal pain are organ obstruction or rupture of the tumor itself, leading to acute abdominal pain of different etiologies.
The etiology of acute abdominal pain in the elderly is complex and the pathogenesis has not yet been elucidated.