Sclerosing Mesenteritis

Lee, Seok Yun; Park, Dong Eun; Chae, Kwon Mook

Abstract

Sclerosing mesenteritis is a rare condition; it's an idiopathic nonspecific inflammatory process in the adipose tissue of the small bowel mesentery. It often develops into huge masses that contain necrotic fat, and these masses mimick malignancy. It has two pathologically different variants: mesenteric panniculitis (acute or subacute) and retractile-mesenteritis (chronic). Although infection, trauma, local ischemia, surgery and malignancy have been implicated in the etiology of this disease, the exact causes are unknown. The disease usually has a favorable prognosis. The diagnosis is confirmed by biopsy. A 59 year-old man visited in our hospital with vague abdominal pain and diarrhea that he had suffered with during the previous three months. A computed tomography (CT) scan showed a dilated small intestine and also masses in the small bowel mesentery. On the operative findings, fibrous masses were noted in the mesentery. The pathologic report revealed sclerosing mesenteritis. We report here on a case of sclerosing mesenteritis along with a review of the literatures.