Computed tomography findings of acute abdomen: a pictorial essay

Abstract

Acute abdomen can be defined as a clinical condition often requires emergency surgical therapy and characterized by severeabdominal pain with tenderness that develops over a short period of time, generally less than 24 hours. There are a variety ofconditions that can present clinically with acute abdomen such as: inflammatory, vascular, mechanic, traumatic. In many cases,the clinical presentation is similar, independent of etiology. The radiological imaging plays very important role to determine theneed for operative intervention and initiate appropriate therapy. Our aim is to describe the computed tomography findings of themost common conditions of acute abdomen excluding trauma and pediatric or obstetric patients.