Article Text
Abstract
Background Empty scrotum may be due to many reasons; besides true undescended testis these are monorchia, retractile testis, atrophy of testis due to torsion and ectopic testis. The location of testis in an aberrant site after passing through the inguinal canal and leaving it via external ring is a condition called ectopic testis. The most common aberrant locations of ectopic testes are superficial inguinal pouch (Denis Browne pouch), within anterior abdominal wall, perineum, femoral canal, contralateral scrotum (transverse testicular ectopia) and prepenile area.
Methods Description of management of five different cases of ectopic testes over a period of 10 years’ experience in pediatric surgery have been done with review of the literature about this rarity.
Results Five different cases of ectopic testes were as follows: infants 3 months of age with right ectopic testis in anterior abdominal wall near anterior superior iliac spine, 4 months of age with left perineal testis, 6 months of age with an ectopic femoral testis on left side, 8 months of age with transverse testicular ectopia on left side and 10 months of age with right true undescended testis and left perineal testis.
Conclusions Search for ectopic sites of testes should always be in mind during examination of patients with empty scrotum. Early surgical repair of ectopic testes is recommended, as there is no chance of spontaneous correction to the normal location. Long-term follow-up is necessary due to relatively high incidence of infertility and malignant transformation. Surgeons should be aware of the rare possibility of transverse testicular ectopia in cases of inguinal hernia with impalpable testis on the contralateral side.
- Empty scrotum
- undescended testis
- ectopic testis
- orcheopexy
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
Contributors AEJ participated sufficiently in contributing to the intellectual content, concept, design of this work, data acquisition, analysis and interpretation of the data. AEJ also contributed in writing of the manuscript, critical revision and takes public responsibility for it. AEJ is the corresponding author responsible for making necessary changes as per the request of the journal.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent for publication Parental/guardian consent obtained.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data availability statement There are no data in this work. No data are available.