The Viscerospinal Syndrome: A Confusing Factor in Surgical Diagnosis

Pseudoappendicitis: abdominal pain arising from thoracic spine dysfunction—a forgotten entity and a reminder of an important clinical lesson

“…Prior to this the association between thoracic spinal dysfunction with the symptoms of abdominal pain was first made by Ussher in 1933 when he described ‘the viscerospinal syndrome’ 7. Subsequently, Wills and Atsatt described five cases of pseudoappendicitis of spinal origin which they cured by injecting the thoracic spine when other treatments failed,8 and Harman and Young successfully treated cases of chronic appendicitis, chronic cholecystitis and renal colic by injecting 1% procaine solution into tender areas of the lower thoracic spine and in the muscles of the abdominal wall, when all other treatments failed 9. More recently, there has been acknowledgement in the literature of chronic non-visceral sources abdominal pain but with no explicit explanation of thoracic spine dysfunction,10 and in other articles hip and/or low back pain symptoms have been found to contribute to abdominal pain,11 and the abdominal wall has also been highlighted as the cause of abdominal pain 12…”