[Abdominal complications of V-P or L-P shunt operation --a bowel perforation and historical review (author's transl)].

We have experienced a case of shunt tube perforation into the transverse colon in which a Pudenz infantile V-A shunt tube was installed for a hydrocephalic baby. The shunt operation was performed at a year and one month of his age in this patient and bowel perforation was disclosed and corrected twenty months following the operation. From a retrospective point of view, however, slight sign of meningitis could be suspected two months earlier and judging from his symptoms of transient intracranial hypertension, the bowel perforation might be traced back even earlier. In the past twenty year history of V-P shunt maneuver, quite a number of papers on various kinds of specific complications have been reported. On reviewing these reported cases out of English and Japanese literature, numerous abdominal complications such as twenty-eight perforations, fifty CSF ascites or pseudocysts, three umbilical perforations, two vaginal perforations, five migrations into scrotum, and some volvulus and bladder perforations can be collected. These are summarized and discussed briefly in this paper.