When a female infant presents with a small irreducible mass in the inguinal or labial region, a very likely diagnosis is inguinal hernia containing an ovary and/or fallopian tube.2 Also considered in the differential diagnosis are hydrocele of the canal of Nuck and inguinal lymphadenopathy. In addition, we have encountered 3 instances of apparent females having inguinal hernias containing testes; subsequent examination revealed an absence of internal female organs, a form of male pseudohermaphroditism. Similar cases have been reported.3,5,11
The source of material for this report is a series of 762 infants and children under the age of 10 with hernias. Of these, 124 were females, and included in the female group are the 3 cases to be considered. This represents 2½% of all apparent females. Although this condition is therefore quite rare, a number of similar but unreported and undocumented cases have been described to us, and