Perforation of acquired small bowel diverticulum.

A 77-year old woman was seen with an unusual pathologic entity after emergent abdominal exploration--a ruptured small bowel diverticulum. This patient had a known previous history of colonic diverticulosis when she had acute onset of severe abdominal pain. The patient underwent an exploratory laparotomy with resection of representative segments of small and large bowel. The large bowel had evidence of diverticulosis, while the small bowel resected segment had evidence of diverticulitis with rupture. An extensive review of the literature revealed a very small number of reported cases in the world literature (less than 150 cases). We reviewed the history of reported cases of ruptured and nonruptured small bowel diverticular disease, as well as this case.