This is a prospective study of 57 cases of intussusception who were admitted to the Alkarama Teaching Hospital inAl-kut from the 1st of October 2011 to the 1st of March 2014.
Age ranging was from one month to three years and the mean age was (6 months); the commonest age group affected was those between (6-12) months , the male: female ratio was (1.7:1) , the disease was more prevalent in spring time .
The cardinal symptoms were abdominal pain in 55 patients (96.5%), followed by the passage of red currant jelly stool in 50 patients (87.7%) and vomiting was present in 45 patients (78.9%).
The most common sign was abdominal mass in 31 patients (54.4%) .
Most of the patients 35 (61.4%) presented in the (24-48) hours from onset of symptoms.
In diagnosis we depended mostly on the clinical picture of the disease supported by plain abdominal x-ray , ultrasonography as Barium enema was not feasible.
Surgical management was the only option for alatients. Simple manual reduction of the bowel with appendectomy was the procedure in 44 (77.2%) of patients and in 7 patients (12.3%) resection was done due to gangrenous bowel with primary anastamosis which was not possible in one of them (1.8%) and ended with ileostomy
Six patients (10.5%) had secondary intussusception and in 4 of them , Meckel`s diverticulum was the lead point and the other 2 cases the polyps were the cause and all were treated by resection and primary anastamosis. Postoperative complications were recorded in 21 patients (36.8%) and mortality rate was recorded in one patient (1.8%).
