Clinical and roentgenographic findings in splenic abscess

F. J. Miller Jr, F. J. Rothermel, M. J. O'Neil and S. J. Shochat

A splenic abscess developed in a 16-year-old boy following a supposed viral illness and left lower thoracic trauma. Preoperative diagnosis was at first obscured, but a spleen scan suggested fractured spleen and a splenic arteriogram showed a "subcapsular hematoma" and an aneurysm of the left hepatic artery. A 1,800-gm spleen containing one large abscess and one small one was removed. Splenic abscess is rare and, before modern methods of spleen scan and arteriography, rarely diagnosed.