Chest
Volume 112, Issue 5, November 1997, Pages 1432-1436
Journal home page for Chest

Selected Reports
Nonsurgical Therapy for Pulmonary Hydatid Cyst Disease

https://doi.org/10.1378/chest.112.5.1432Get rights and content

Therapeutic and diagnostic aspiration of Echinococcus granulosus liver cysts, but not pulmonary cysts, are increasingly being performed. Documented herein is the utility of percutaneous drainage and of albendazole treatment in a patient with a large recurrent, isolated, pulmonary echinococcal cyst for whom traditional therapy would have resulted in severe morbidity. Therapeutic options and possible complications are discussed.

Section snippets

CASE REPORT

A 27-year-old Peruvian journalist, who immigrated to the United States in 1985, was seen at a local emergency department for fever (a temperature of 39.4°C), productive cough, shortness of breath, pleuritic chest pain, and streaky hemoptysis of 2 days' duration. A chest x-ray film revealed a 12-cm cystic mass in the upper portion of the lower lobe of the left lung (Fig 1, top). A diagnosis of bronchitis and possible recurrence of previous pulmonary echinococcal disease was made; the patient

DISCUSSION

Traditional treatment of E granulosus infection entails surgical removal of the cyst.6 This approach carries a morbidity of 0 to 13%; and mortality of 0 to 5%;, while recurrence of cysts varies from 2 to 30%; over 5 years even without obvious spillage of cyst contents.6,7 More recently, prophylaxis and treatment with the benzimidazole carbamates, most notably albendazole, have shown significant efficacy.7,8,10 Treatment and prophylaxis regimens are only partially effective, and normally

REFERENCES (17)

There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (0)

View full text