What is the football sign?
People who interpret medical images are looking for abnormal visual information when scanning a patient who can help direct it to the presence of a health problem. The football sign is one of them and represents the presence of air inside the chest in places it should not be. It is most often found in young children, the football sign is recognizable only in X -rays, because scanning can pick up the body football area, where, unlike lighter color areas of tissue, a dark stain of air is visible.
The football sign is thus named for its distinctive American football shape. This has an oval appearance unlike spherical football football. The air is less dense than the cells, so it seems darker and translucent than the cells under the X -ray that are more opaque. It is a possible symptom of a condition called pneumoperitoneum, which simply means that the patient has abnormal air collections inside his abdomen.
small children have smaller abdomesthan adults who may in these cases clear that the football sign may be obvious than in adults whose larger abdomen may distract free air more thoroughly. In addition, children are likely to have pneumoperitoneum than in the elderly. Although the football sign is a significant feature of pneumoperitoneum, it is not present in all cases and is rarely seen in adults.
Pneumoperitone is most common when the patient has organ damage that allows air to the abdominal space. In healthy people, the abdominal space is airtight and acts as a space for storage and protection for organs. Normally, the air moves, even if the digestive system and escape either as gas or as a buzz from the mouth.
Only when the stomach or intestine develops a hole somewhere where the air gets into the abdomen. The air reacts to gravitational forces and forms a bubble in the shape of football when the patient lies. IfThe patient built, the air tends to collect under the membrane in a different shape.
The stomach perforation, which is a hole in the stomach, is a possible cause of a football sign. Another option is necrotizing enterocolitis, an infection that grows the intestine. Hirschssprung's disease, which is a congenital nervous lack of intestine, can also cause football sign, along with other diseases that can cause the intestine blocking. In addition to the causes of the disease, the patient can also develop air bubbles in the abdomen of artificial ventilation, where the machine pumps air into the lungs of the patient.