Four years after surgeons repaired his right groin hernia, an 81-year-old man in Colombia arrived at the hospital with severe abdominal pain, vomiting, and a bulge in his right groin that wouldn't go back in. He hadn't had a bowel movement in two days.
What surgeons found inside was exceptionally rare: a 10-centimeter pouch of intestine he had carried since before birth, strangled inside the returning hernia along with a neighboring loop of bowel. The condition, called Littré's hernia, has been described in fewer than 100 patients worldwide, according to the case report from surgeons at Clínica Santa María del Lago in Bogotá, published in the September issue of the Journal of Surgical Case Reports.
