Clinical Presentation in a Series of Eight Children with Abdominal Tuberculosis: Experience of a Single-Center in Turkey

Abdominal tuberculosis, the sixth commonest extrapulmanory tuberculosis, is easily misdiagnosed due to nonspecific gastrointestinal symptoms. The diagnosis is highly dependent on clinician’s suspicion of the disease; therefore to increase awareness we retrospectively reviewed clinical features of eight children in a four year-period.
The medical records of children with abdominal TB were retrospectively reviewed. The diagnosis of abdominal TB was defined as Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection of gastrointestinal tract along with peritoneal or solid organ involvement.
There were six girls and two boys with a mean age of 13.6 ± 2.8 years (range, 7 - 16 years). Abdominal pain and weight loss were common complaints in all patients (100%) at presentation; fever was present in four (50%) patients and abdominal distension in two (25%) patients. Mean duration of symptoms before diagnosis was 2.5 ± 1 months. Laparotomy performed in six patients, and the peritoneum was the most common infection site (in 5 patients). Chest X-rays of 7 patients indicated lung involvement. The most common abdominal computed tomography and ultrasonography finding was ascites. Bowel wall thickening was recorded in 2 patients and ileal thickening in 1 patient. Inguinal lymphadenopathy and multiple mesenteric lymphadenitis were present as single cases.
The abdominal tuberculosis should be suspected in children with ongoing abdominal pain, fever, and abdominal distension, laparoscopy or laparotomy could be useful in the differential diagnosis and utilizing imaging techniques, invasive methods with clinical suspicion may prevent delay of the diagnosis.