Abdominal Apoplexy

Spontaneous rupture of a visceral vessel into the peritoneum or between the leaves of the mesentery has occasionally been reported in the literature, but it has usually been associated with trauma, intra-abdominal disease or malignant growth. Spontaneous rupture of a visceral vessel due to arteriosclerosis and hypertension is an extremely rare occurrence as judged by the reports in the literature, although most of the authors express their surprise that this phenomenon does not occur more frequently. The case presented here apparently belongs to the latter group of rare cases of abdominal apoplexy caused by marked arteriosclerosis and hypertension. We use the word "apparently" because in this case the exact site of rupture was not located. In reviewing the literature we found that ten previous cases of abdominal apoplexy associated with arteriosclerosis and hypertension have been reported: (1)