Combined vesico-vaginal and vesico-cutaneous fistulae are exceptionally rare. We present a young woman who had combined vesico-vaginal fistula and vesico-cutaneous fistula following prolonged obstructed labour and caesarean section. The patient presented at three months of illness with total urine incontinence from the vagina and lower abdominal skin. One-stage surgical repair of both fistulae was done. The patient had a successful closure of the fistulae, regained full urinary continence, and remained continent at six months follow-up. We opine that one-stage repair of combined vesico-vaginal and vesico-cutaneous fistulae is feasible and preferred. Providers of pelvic surgery in low resource countries should be supervised and retrained accordingly, in order to prevent iatrogenic vesico-cutaneous fistula.

Empyema thoracis is the collection of pus in the pleural space. A 9-year-old boy presented with a 3-day history of high grade continuous fever, a day history of abdominal pain, distension and fast breathing. Examination findings: acutely ill child, febrile, in respiratory distress. Chest findings: tachypnea, dull percussion note and decreased air entry on the right hemithorax. Chest radiograph: massive fluid collection in the right hemithorax. A pleural tap yielded frank pus that was sent for microscopy, culture and sensitivity (MCS). Escherichia coli was cultured which was sensitive to fluoroquinolones. Klebsiella spp was also cultured from the blood sample taken for MCS and yielded the same sensitivity. Patient responded well to tube thoracostomy drainage and administration of antibiotics. Empyema thoracis with the isolation of two-gram negative organisms in a previously healthy child is rare.

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Background: Volvulus involves the twisting of an air-liquid stool-filled thin-walled segment of an intestine around its necessarily narrow mesenterial base, thereby strangulating the blood vessels, which often causes necrosis of this redundant intestinal segment. Intestinal volvulus had always been supposed to be a disease of the blacks from West African and the Bushmen natives of South Africa. The West African subset became the index region. Surgery was the best treatment for the full-blown disease. Conservative methods of management have only just been developed and studied in the Scandinavian countries. Scandinavian early rectosigmoidoscopic reductions of the twisted colonic segment have offered some valuable alternative helps. Methods: We studied the documents of all the 44 patients who had a presumptive diagnosis of acute or subacute colonic volvulus and were admitted to surgical management. Biostatistics, exact history taking of the patients, carefully structured physical examination, and a good digital scout X-ray investigation of the abdomen helped to make a rapid diagnosis. Laparotomies confirmed such a diagnosis. We did not regularly attempt to do recto-sigmoidoscopic untwisting of the volvuli. All had Hartmann’s procedure surgeries with terminal colostomies. Results: Of the 41 patients admitted to surgical management, 31 were males and 10 were females with a ratio of 3:1. The timing of surgery influenced mortalities and morbidities greatly. Conclusion: The diagnosis of acute volvulus was simple. We needed to record the medical history, took the proper physical examination, correctly explained the examination results, and only studied the abdominal X-ray film without resorting to advanced computer tomography.