Multiple malignant lymphoma within an ileal blind loop--report of a case.

A 55-year-old woman presented to our hospital with abdominal fullness and edema of both legs. She had undergone a bypass operation by an ileotransversostomy for adhesive ileus following a drainage operation for acute appendicitis 35 years previously. We diagnosed the patient as having blind loop syndrome as a consequence of the side-to-side ileotransversostomy, and performed a right hemicolectomy and intestinal resection. The resected specimen of dilated ileal blind loop contained 15 crater-like lesions, proven histologically to be nodular proliferation of atypical lymphocytes. Lymph follicles had also proliferated in the mucosa of the blind loop and the histologically confirmed diagnosis of non-Hodgkins lymphoma of the diffuse medium-sized cell type was thus made. The etiology of such tumors is probably related to the alteration in intestinal environment caused by conditions such as fecal stasis, bacterial overgrowth, and bacterial toxins in the blind loop.