Case Report

Familial mediterranean fever: a diagnostic challenge in pregnancy

  • Candan Iltemir Duvan
  • Nilgün Öztürk Turhan
  • Yüksel Onaran
  • Ilknur Inegöl Gümüs
  • Elif Gözdemir

Received Date: 09.05.2009 Accepted Date: 25.06.2009 J Turk Ger Gynecol Assoc 2009;10(4):235-237 PMID: 24591879

Familial Mediterranean Fever (FMF) is an autosomal recessive disease which is characterized by recurrent, self-limiting, short attacks of serositis while abdominal pain is the most common symptom. The underlying clinical and pathological picture is that of acute peritonitis. These abdominal signs are often so striking that they mimic an acute abdominal calamity suggesting several possible gastrointestinal, gynecologic or urologic diagnoses. Diagnosis of acute abdomen in pregnancy also remains one of the most challenging conditions as the physiological consequence of pregnancy and nonspecific laboratory parameters. A limited number of studies addressed FMF in pregnancy and none of them mentioned the diagnostic challenging of FMF during pregnancy because the patients had al been diagnosed previously. In this paper, we discussed a 20 year old, gravida 1, parity 0 patient whose twin pregnancy wash complicated by an acute abdominal condition after amniocentesis and the difficulties of making the diagnosis of FMF with the complications during this diagnostic period in pregnancy.

Keywords: Pregnancy, diagnosis, familial Mediterranean fever, acute abdomen