Santos PLA, Milián HG

Language: Spanish
References: 0
Page: 461-470
PDF size: 348.39 Kb.

ABSTRACT

The presence of lymph of thoracic or intestinal origin in the abdominal cavity is defined as chylous ascites, an infrequent disease, usually associated with another disease of difficult diagnosis in which the treatment, commonly, does not achieve good results. The contribution of this work is to report the cases of two female patients in whom chylous ascites was diagnosed at the D Medicine Ward of the Arnaldo Milián Castro Hospital, and to carry out a review of the physiopathology, clinical presentation, etiologies, diagnosis and treatment of this disease. The clinical and evolutionary data of the two patients were summarized. They did not present a traumatic, infectious, neoplastic or surgical history that could account for chylous ascites. The diagnosis was made by the appearance of the liquid, which was obtained by paracentesis and by its cytochemical study, with triglyceride content above 200mg/dl in both cases. The cause of chylous ascites was liver cirrhosis in one of the patients and cancer of the uterus with lymphatic invasion in the second. Both patients died; the former due to bacterial peritonitis and dysfunction and failure of multiple organs, and the latter due to malnutrition, peritonitis and infiltration of the omentum due to adenosquamous carcinoma of the endometrium infiltrating the myometrium.