A very rare cause of retroperitoneal bleeding in young patients: do not forget the occurrence of a ruptured left gastroepiploic artery aneurysm!

Abstract

Visceral artery aneurysms represent a very rare condition. The affected patients usually present as emergency secondary to the sudden rupture of the aneurysm or as an incidental finding on imaging. In this setting, gastric and gastroepiploic aneurysms account for only about 4% of all the splancnic aneurysms. Since ruptured visceral aneurysms present a high mortality, a prompt and adequate (surgical or radiological interventional) treatment is mandatory. Due to the difficulty in achieving an adequate transcatheter access in some cases the emergency laparotomy may represent the only chance for the recover of the affected patients. We report two cases of ruptured left gastroepiploic aneurysms occurred in two young male patients, treated respectively with emergency laparotomy and laparoscopy.