Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0085693 (acute appendicitis)
 3,606 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Acute abdomen is not a disease entity on its own but describes a critical state of the patient which can be caused by numerous diseases. The surgeon and internist have to apply an interdisciplinary approach to enable a rapid decision on whether immediate laparotomy is mandatory. Few appropriate diagnostic procedures support decision making. In many cases there is an indication for immediate surgery, such as perforated gastric or duodenal ulcer, acute appendicitis, diverticulitis, ruptured aortic aneurysm, mechanic ileus, infarction of the mesenteric artery. This review is mainly focused on diseases which may present as acute abdomen but for which surgery is usually not indicated, such as acute pancreatitis. Furthermore, one also has to consider rare diseases in which laparotomy would clearly be a mistake, such as acute intermittent porphyria or intestinal pseudo-obstruction.
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PMID:[Acute abdomen]. 1596 64

As a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Charles Floyd was the first United States soldier to die west of the Mississippi River. He was among his companions and developed the sudden onset of abdominal pain and was dead the next day. The most common medical opinion for cause of death has been acute appendicitis. However a new edition of his journal reveals signs and symptoms previously overlooked suggesting a genetically determined metabolic etiology, which is explored in this report to the conclusion that he died from acute intermittent porphyria.
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PMID:On the death of Kentuckian Charles Floyd, August 20, 1804--the only casualty of the Lewis and Clark expedition: a solution to a 200-year-old medical mystery. 1794 23