Causes of Abdominal Pain
The primary prerogative of a health care practitioner is to take seriously any complaints of abdominal pain lasting more than an hour, and to exclude any potentially dangerous cause of such pain that may in anyway pose threat to life.
This is easily done by way of taking an adequate history to understand the pattern of the pain, detailed physical examination, and the conducting of ancillary tests and other investigations as may be necessary. Once a potentially dangerous cause of pain in the abdomen has been excluded, most causes of abdominal pain would go away with time, and can be managed by treating associated symptoms. An out going president of the American Medical Association had this to say regarding abdominal pain: "When I began practice … I was relatively safe in assuming [that abdominal pain] was appendicitis or green apples. Today it is also highly probable that the patient is suffering from the fact that his wife of 40 years wants to leave him for the Peace Corps or Richard Burton." - Dr Gunnar Gundersen, former President, American Medical Association.
So diverse could the causes of abdominal pain be that it runs the gamut from physical problems like appendicitis to emotional ones as revealed above. You may even know someone who may have felt disappointment with the diagnosis of the cause of their tummy pain. We will therefore attempt to go through all the common causes of pain in the abdomen and work our way through the characteristics of abdominal pain in each of these conditions. But what is abdominal pain? What could cause abdominal pain in different part of the tummy and how can these be identified? Abdominal (belly, tummy) pain refers to the feeling of any unpleasant or annoying sensation anywhere between the edge of your rib cage to the margins of your waist bone on the front or side.
The abdomen is a space or cavity that is lined by a thin membrane called peritoneum, and it contains part of the esophagus or gullet, the stomach, intestines, liver, gall bladder, pancreas, kidneys, ureters (which are the tubes that drain urine from the kidneys to the) bladder, the adrenal glands; in females, the uterus, ovaries, and tubes.
Any injury or bugs affecting this areas or structures just listed would cause pain in the belly. For the purpose of Easy of diagnosis, causes of abdominal pain can also be traced by dividing these into upper abdominal pain , central abdominal pain , lower abdominal pain , right side abdominal pain , and left side abdominal pain .
The following are specific causes of abdominal pain. Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Abdominal-Migraine Appendicitis Biliary Colic Bowel Cancer Bowel Obstruction Braxton Hicks Carcinoid Tumour Chance Fracture Celiac Disease Cholecystitis Constipation Ectopic Pregnancy Menstrual Pain Non-specific Abdominal Pain Ovarian Cancer Ovarian Cyst Pancreatic Cancer Pancreatitis Peptic Ulcer Pneumonia Porphyria Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis Pulmonary Embolism Pyloric Stenosis
Miscarriage
Of all causes of abdominal pain listed above, constipation, trapped wind, indigestion, irritable bowel syndrome, urinary tract infection, menstrual pain and appendicitis are the most common cause of pain in the abdomen. This list is by no means exhaustive. Other causes like intestinal worms, emotional problems and accidents would be mentioned in passing, and they should always be considered, when trying to decipher the probable cause of abdominal pain in any individual.
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