Abdominal pain is a difficult diagnostic challenge.
There are so many organs and structures in the abdomen that determining the cause of pain is often difficult and sometimes impossible. Even stranger causes of abdominal pain include black widow spider bites and rare diseases such as porphyria. Several methods for narrowing the hunt for a cause are used. Dividing the abdomen into four quadrants and describing the pain in terms of location can be helpful. In the left upper quadrant one finds the stomach, spleen, and part of the pancreas as well as loops of bowel.