Abdominal Tuberculosis; A Study of 15 Cases

Abstract

AbstractBackground: Tuberculosis is an important communicable disease in the world. Abdominal tuberculosis occurs as primary form or secondary to pulmonary tuberculosis. Objectives: To study cases with abdominal tuberculosis cases presented for surgery in respect to their age, sex, clinical presentation, surgical findings, surgical procredure and outcome.Methods: Out of 712 cases explored surgically for different pathologies (emergency and elective), 15 cases with abdominal tuberculosis presented to the authors and managed surgically by them were reviewed in detail.Results: Both sexes were nearly equally affected. Most patients were in the third & fourth decade. Nine patients presented as acute abdomen (six as acute intestinal obstruction and three as pelvic peritonitis). The others had insidious presentation (three presented with chronic abdominal pain, two had a mass in the right iliac fossa and one present with ascites). All had exploratory laparotomy apart from two cases who were dealt with laparoscopically. Adhesiolysis was needed in most patients and the diagnosis was settled on histopathological basis. One patient died. All patients were referred for medical treatment after the diagnosis was settled.Conclusion: Abdominal tuberculosis is rarely a surgical problem which is reserved for its complications, otherwise its main treatment is medical. It has non specific clinical features and acute intestinal obstruction was the main presentation. The diagnosis was made according to histopathological findings and the outcome of surgical treatment was generally good.Keywords: Abdominal tuberculosis, diagnosis, surgical management.