TY - JOUR T1 - Retrospective study of abdominal tuberculosis without pulmonary involvement: a difficult to diagnose form of extrapulmonary tuberculosis JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J DO - 10.1183/13993003.congress-2018.PA2755 VL - 52 IS - suppl 62 SP - PA2755 AU - Ana Santos Dornellas Cysneiros AU - Miguel Afonso AU - Filipa Ferro AU - Joana Carvalho AU - Teresa Mourato AU - Alexandre Gomes AU - Conceicao Gomes AU - Ana Castro Y1 - 2018/09/15 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/52/suppl_62/PA2755.abstract N2 - Background: Extrapulmonary tuberculosis (TB) can involve any organ. Abdominal tuberculosis (ATB) remains a rare entity with delayed presentation and difficult diagnosis.Materials and Methods: We conducted a retrospective study of 23 patients with ATB, without pulmonary involvement, managed at the Lisbon TB Diagnostic Centre from 2012 to 2017. Patient demographics, site of ATB, comorbidities, details of confirmation of TB diagnosis and treatment were recorded from the TB national registry forms.Results: We found 23 patients with ATB without pulmonary involvement (1.2% of a total of 1995 cases). 56.5% were male, mean age at diagnosis was 49.5 years and 45.5 % were born outside Portugal. HIV infection was present in 13% and hepatitis C in 21.7 %. The most frequent presentation was ascites (39.1 %) and change in bowel habit (26.1%). Peritoneal involvement was seen in 43.4% and intestinal involvement in 43.4% Diagnosis took on average 3.7 months after patients were investigated for malignancy, inflammatory bowel disease or both. ATB was confirmed in 43.4% of cases. 21.7% after cultured peritoneal fluid and 17.4% by culture of tissue biopsy, the remaining cases were considered probable ATB due to histology findings. Importantly 47.8% of patients required surgery to achieve a diagnosis. Treatment duration was 9.4 months, considerably longer than the predicted 6 months. There were two deaths, one after abandoning treatment and one from complications of obstructed bowel.Conclusions: ATB without pulmonary involvement has a delayed presentation and difficult diagnosis. Patients should be actively investigated, and many will require laparoscopy for histology and culture.FootnotesCite this article as: European Respiratory Journal 2018 52: Suppl. 62, PA2755.This is an ERS International Congress abstract. No full-text version is available. Further material to accompany this abstract may be available at www.ers-education.org (ERS member access only). ER -