Case Report
Coexisting Situs Inversus Totalis and Immune
Thrombocytopenic Purpura
Kemal Gundogdu,
1
Fatih Altintoprak,
2
Mustafa Yener UzunoLlu,
1
Enis Dikicier,
1
Esmail Zengin,
1
and Orhan YaLmurkaya
1
1
Department of General Surgery, Sakarya University Research and Educational Hospital, Sakarya, Turkey
2
Department of General Surgery, Sakarya University Faculty of Medicine, Sakarya, Turkey
Correspondence should be addressed to Fatih Altintoprak; fatihaltintoprak@yahoo.com
Received 3 December 2015; Accepted 12 January 2016
Academic Editor: Christoph Schmitz
Copyright © 2016 Kemal Gundogdu et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution
License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly
cited.
Situs inversus totalis is a rare congenital abnormality with mirror symmetry of mediastinal and abdominal organs. Immune
thrombocytopenic purpura is an autoimmune disease with destruction of thrombocytes. Tis paper is presentation of surgical
approach to a case with coexistence of these two conditions.
1. Introduction
Chronic immune thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP) is an
autoimmune disease characterized by an immune response
to thrombocyte membrane antigens. ITP is generally treated
with surgery and steroids [1]. Situs inversus totalis is a rare
congenital abnormality in which all of the mediastinal and
abdominal organs are transposed to mirror symmetry of the
normal anatomy. Tis paper reports the coexistence of these
two rare conditions.
2. Case Presentation
A 35-year-old woman was referred to our clinic with a
diagnosis of ITP resistant to medical treatment in whom
a splenectomy was indicated. For 7 years, she had been
treated regularly with 1 mg/kg/day methylprednisolone and
episodic intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) in the hema-
tology clinic and had persistent thrombocytopenia of 3,000–
60,000/mm
3
, ongoing menorrhagia, and ecchymosis. Te
patient had two healthy births afer IVIG treatment. Preop-
eratively, dextrocardia was detected on an electrocardiogram
and thoracoabdominal computed tomography (CT) showed
situs inversus totalis. In addition to mirror imaging of the
normal anatomic locations of all organs, the spleen measured
13 × 6 cm and there was a 1.5 cm accessory spleen in the right
upper quadrant (Figure 1). Although no abnormalities were
seen in the head and body of the pancreas, no pancreatic
tail was seen. In other words, the pancreas had not crossed
over to the right side of the superior mesenteric vascular
axis and there was no pancreatic tissue near the splenic
hilum (Figure 2). Te patient underwent a laparoscopic
splenectomy (Figure 3) with no complications or adverse
events following surgery. She was discharged on the third
postoperative day with thrombocyte count of 155,000/mm
3
.
3. Discussion
Immune (idiopathic) thrombocytopenic purpura is an
autoimmune disease characterized by the destruction of
thrombocytes or suppression of their production as a result of
an immune reaction with thrombocyte membrane autoanti-
gens [1]. Terapy is required when the thrombocyte count
falls below 20,000/mm
3
or if there are symptoms such as
mucosal or vaginal hemorrhage when the count is in the
range 20,000–50,000/mm
3
. In the event of nonresponse to
medical therapy, the alternative therapy is splenectomy [2].
Te treatment success rate afer splenectomy ranges within
50–70%. Accessory spleens are found in 15% of the general
population and should be detected in ITP patients when a
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
Case Reports in Surgery
Volume 2016, Article ID 8605673, 3 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2016/8605673