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Intussusception: The Common Emergency You Don’t Know About

The symptoms started abruptly.

We were in the car, my mom and I and my two young children, on a trip in Texas, in the middle of nowhere. Sam, the baby, started having bouts of wrenching screams every hour on the hour. Nothing could soothe him. He nursed, then spat everything up. Then he’d calm down, get tired, only to start up again, in pain. What could it be? My mother and I were mystified. Was it a new tooth? Food poisoning?

This went on for hours. And hours. And hours. Vomiting yellow liquid, screaming. And eventually, blood in his stool. “Emergency room,” Mom and I agreed.

I don’t blame the tiny county medical center for the misdiagnosis. It can happen. It…

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Well, it is the #1 cause of intestinal obstruction in children 6 months to 36 months. So, its got that going for it, which is nice. Think about intussusception like a collapsible telescope. One piece of bowel – the proximal intussusceptum, usually the ileum, slides into another piece – the distal intussuscipiens – usually the colon and gets momentarily stuck.

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Unravelling intussusception

Most intussusceptions affect the terminal end of the ileum being ileocolic in nature though the condition can be enteroenteric, appendiceal, appendiceal-ileocolic, ileocolic, colocolic and rectoanal...primarily affects infants and is the most common cause of bowel obstruction between the ages of 3 months to 3 years with occurrences peaking between 5 and 9 months.