Primary mesenteric adenocarcinoma (PMA) is a rare malignant disease. A case of PMA that was covered by an abscess of the mesocolon and intestinal obstruction is reported in the present study. As the onset site of PMA is often obscured or hidden, there may be no clinical symptoms in the early stage. At the advanced stage, the tumor size is large enough to induce intestinal obstruction, perforation, bleeding, volvulus and other clinical symptoms in the majority of patients. Computed tomography scans, ultrasound and other auxiliary examinations are not sufficiently accurate for diagnosing PMA with non-specific characteristics in the majority of cases, causing certain difficulties in the pre-operative diagnosis of PMA, which easily lead to misdiagnosis. The main effective treatment of PMA is surgical resection as early as possible. Thus, when a patient is suspected of having malignancies, and gastrointestinal cancer and other malignancies of the digestive organs may be excluded, the possibility of PMA should be considered.
Keywords: abscess; intestinal obstruction; primary mesenteric adenocarcinoma.