Liver Abscess Caused by Entamoeba Histolytica: An Autopsy Case

Abstract

The case is that of a fifty two year old farmer from Amami-Oshima Island. He had an epigastric tumor, which had been falsely diagnosed as a retroperitoneal tumor on the basis of physical and X-ray findings. But, as revealed by autopsy, the tumor was actually a solitary giant abscess in the left lobe of the liver caused by Entamoeba histolytica from latent chronic amoebic colitis.
The general emaciation of the patient seemed to have induced perforation of the liver abscess into the gastric cavity, and, at the same time, perforation of the colon into the peritoneal cavity following relapse of the amoebic colitis. Such a clinical course of amoebiasis as this case is rare in the literature.
The authors studied the development of the amoebiasis, and reviewing the probable causes of the mis-diagnosis, considered the optimum diagnostic procedure to be followed in a case of this sort.