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Abdominal Pain Emergencies
Below is a brief overview of abdominal pain emergencies.

Anatomy of Abdominal Pain
Abdominal pain can be referred to as visceral pain or peritoneal pain. To better understand the types of pain, it is important to understand the anatomy of the abdomen. The contents of the abdomen can be divided into the foregut, midgut, and hindgut. The foregut contains the pharynx, lower respiratory tract, portions of the esophagus, stomach, portions of the duodenum (proximal), liver, biliary tract (including the gallbladder and bile ducts), and the pancreas. The midgut contains portions of the duodenum (distal), cecum, appendix, ascending colon, and first half of the transverse colon. The hindgut contains the distal half of the transverse colon, descending colon, sigmoid colon, rectum, and superior anal canal.

Each subsection of the gut has an associated visceral afferent nerve that transmits sensory information from the viscera to the spinal cord, traveling with the autonomic sympathetic nerves. The visceral sensory information from the gut traveling to the spinal cord, termed the visceral afferent, is non-specific and overlaps with the somatic afferent nerves, which are very specific. Therefore, visceral afferent information traveling to the spinal cord can present in the distribution of the somatic afferent nerve; this is why appendicitis initially presents with T10 periumbilical pain when it first begins and becomes T12 pain as the abdominal wall peritoneum (which is rich with somatic afferent nerves) is involved.