Air Pressure Enema Reduction in Infant and Childhood Intussusception

ABSTRACT

Reduction of intussusception using air or oxygen has wide acceptance as an alternative to conventional hydrostatic reduction. This study was undertaken to evaluate the results and complications of air pressure enema in 948 pediatric intussusception. One hundred and twenty nine cases had been operated because of the air reduction failure at the Department of Surgery, Masan Samsung Hospital from 1985 to 1996 were analysed. The success rate was 86.4%. Twenty-one patients (2.2%) showed perforation during air reduction. Risk factors of perforation were; age less than 3 months (42.9% vs 11.1%), duration of symtoms greater than 48 hours (66.7% Vs 33.3%), and presence of pathologic leading point (28.6% vs 3.7%). Vomitting and spontaneous rectal bleeding revealed higher prediction to the complication. In ninteen cases, pathoogy showed bowel infarction, coagulated necrosis and hemorrhage which suggest the cause of perforation tp to the preexisting strangulation. In conclusion, when doing an air pressure enema reduction, care must be taken to the young age as well as long duration gruop.