J Korean Surg Soc.
2006 Mar;70(3):214-217.
Clinical Analysis of Urachal Anomalies
- Affiliations
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- 1Department of Surgery, Kyunghee University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea. swhong@khmc.or.kr
Abstract
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PURPOSE: Although relatively rare, urachal remnants manifest as a large number of diverse disorders, which can lead to a high misdiagnosis rate. Because of the many clini-cal pre-sentations, there are no uniform guidelines for the evaluation and treatment of urachal remnants. We report our experi-ence with urachal anomalies in an attempt to establish an optimal diagnostic and treatment modality.
METHODS
Fifteen patients (6 males and 9 females), who had undergone surgery for urachal anomalies from December 1988 to July 2004, were analyzed retrospectively.
RESULTS
The patients' age ranged from 1 day to 71 years old. The 3 variants of urachal anomalies included a patent urachus in 1 patients (7%), urachal sinus in 5 (33%), and an urachal cyst in 9 (60%). The presenting complaint was a low abdominal mass in 6 patients, abdominal pain in 5, periumbilical discharge in 3, fever in 3, and periumbilical urination in 2. Four combined anomalies were observed in 4 patients. The diagnostic evaluation included fistulography in 3 cases, sonography in 12, and CT in 3. Excision was performed in 12 patients.
CONCLUSION
Urachal anomalies most often present in infancy, and can be diagnosed and treated with certainty if a good physical examination and proper imaging studies are performed. Surgical excision is the treatment of choice for urachal anomalies.
