A 29 years old female, physician by profession presented to the emergency department with a history of aggressive vomiting five weeks back followed by left upper abdominal, a single episode of loose motion, subcostal pain radiating to left shoulder associated with shortness of breath (SOB) and was unable to take full inspiration. The patient has a history of heartburn, early satiety, indigestion, and food regurgitation six years ago and diagnosed and managed as gastroesophageal reflux disease in her native country.
The primary evaluation shows a toxic looking afebrile patient with vitals as; respiratory rate-27/min, pulse 87/min. Along with first-level management, abdominal ultrasonography (US) and initial laboratory workup were done in ED with no abnormal findings and the patient discharged home after the primary management independently and not asking surgeon on-call help. Upon no improvement, the patient revisited the ED where chest x-ray (CXR) as primary imaging modality was requested by surgeon on-call that showed raised right hemidiaphragm with no well discernible outlines, air-filled bowel loops above the hepatic shadow, a chilaiditi's sign, with no mediastinal shift (Fig. 1a), thus a provisional diagnosis of the right-sided diagrammatic hernia was made.
Following CXR, a non-contrast CT requested showing stomach and parts of the colon in the right thoracic cavity (Fig. 2a) along with spleen located posterior to the heart - the retrocardiac spleen (Fig. 2b), thus a final diagnosis of Bochdalek hernia was made.
Severe vomiting, a few weeks earlier was the triggering event in the patient that led to the initiation of the clinical picture. After initial stabilization, the patient was transferred to a regional tertiary care facility for cardiothoracic surgeon evaluation and management where via open thoracotomy, contents reduced and fortunately there was no vascular compromise. Repair done. Post-operative chest x-ray shows normal findings (Fig. 1b). The patient had uneventful recovery and discharged home on 10th post-operative day. The patient did well in her follow-up period. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first reported case of Bochdalek hernia associated with the retrocardiac spleen in an adult female in the published literature.