"Vaginal" bleeding in prepubertal age: a rare scaring riddle, a case of the urethral prolapse and review of the literature

Abstract

The entities responsible for isolated vaginal bleeding are a broad spectrum of diseases. Vaginal bleeding in a prepubertal child is always treated as an alarming symptom both by parents and professionals. Most often, one of the first hypotheses is that a sexual abuse may be occurred and the clinical work up is oriented to explore it and eventually confirm or substantiante another diagnosis. Among the possible differential diagnosis urethral prolapse has to be considered. We report the case of a 6 years-old Caucasian girl referred to our Service for a mild vaginal bleeding and with the suspicion of sexual abuse, excluded after the confirmation of the presence of urethral prolapse. The clinical picture and workup are described and compared with a review of the international literature on the issue.