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The aetiology of mechanical bowel obstruction exhibits significant variability based on geographical location and age. In high-income countries, postoperative adhesions and hernias are frequently cited as the primary causes, whereas in low- and middle-income countries (LMCIs), hernias take precedence. Speculation exists within the surgical community regarding whether this trend has evolved in LMCIs. To address this knowledge gap, our study aims to conduct a systematic review of existing literature, focusing on understanding the most prevalent causes of mechanical bowel obstruction in both pediatric and adult populations within LMCIs, providing valuable insights for surgical practice. This protocol was designed and written according to the guidelines of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-analysis Protocol 2015 (PRISMA-P 2015) statement. However, the results of the systematic review will be reported following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-analysis (PRISMA) statement. We will consider studies published in English and French between 2002 and 2022 that reported on the aetiology of mechanical bowel obstruction in any age group in low- and middle-income countries. We will conduct a literature search using Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid Embase, CINAHL on EBSCO and Web of Science databases employing relevant subject headings, keywords and synonyms, which will be combined using Boolean operators to refine the search results. A hand search of references of retrieved literature will be conducted. The retrieved articles will be imported into Zotero for de-duplication. The resulting set of titles and abstracts will be uploaded to Rayyan (an AI-assisted online systematic review tool), where they will be double-checked to identify articles eligible for inclusion. Two independent reviewers will screen articles to be included and disagreement will be resolved by discussion or by a third reviewer as a tie-breaker. Also, data extraction will be done by one reviewer and confirmed by another. Critical appraisal to assess the quality of the included studies will be carried out by two independent reviewers using the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) tools. We anticipate that the eligible studies will be quite heterogeneous in terms of their design, outcomes of interest, populations and comorbidities. Therefore, resmay be synthesised descriptively without meta-analysis using charts, graphs and tables. Where possible, we will conduct a sub-analysis using conceptual frameworks based on age, WHO regions and continents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Ileosigmoid knotting (ISK) is a rare intestinal obstruction form worldwide. The aim of this study was to investigate changing trends in ISK. Methods: The Web of Science and PubMed databases were electronically searched to find all publications to evaluate all epidemiological, etiological, clinical, laboratory, radiological, therapeutic, and prognostic factors in ISK. Results: Most of the cases were reported from Asian and African countries. Mean age was 43.9 years with a 79.9%/20.1% of male/female ratio. Main symptom period was 48.1 hours, while the most common clinical features were abdominal pain/tenderness (99.1%), distention (88.3%), and obstipation/constipation (58.8%). Abdominal X-ray radiography, computerized tomography (CT), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) were diagnostic in 8.2%, 96.2%, and 100.0%, respectively, while the total diagnostic accuracy rate was 20.8%. Bowels were gangrenous in 85.6% of the patients. Ileum resection was applied in 14.0% of the cases, while sigmoid colon resection in 7.6%, and both segment resection in 67.1%. The mortality rate was 22.7%, while the morbidity rate was also 22.7%. Conclusion: ISK is a rare disease, but it is still catastrophic despite its two-century recognised past. As an exception, diagnostic convenience arising from CT or MRI looks like the most important change over the last half-century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]