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Global health
CASE REPORT
Extrapulmonary tuberculosis: a debilitating and often neglected public health problem
  1. Sudeep Adhikari1 and
  2. Buddha Basnyat2
  1. 1 Department of Internal Medicine, Patan Hospital, Kathmandu, Nepal
  2. 2 Oxford University Clinical Research Unit, Patan Hospital, Kathmandu, Nepal
  1. Correspondence to Buddha Basnyat, Buddha.Basnyat{at}ndm.ox.ac.uk

Abstract

We report a case of a 33-year-old woman from Nepal who presented to a hospital with paraplegia. She was found to have pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) with lumbar spine involvement, and bilateral psoas abscesses. She had no initial symptoms attributable to pulmonary involvement. Her delayed presentation to the hospital led to complication of TB spine, which compromised the life of this woman working as a labourer. Early diagnosis and treatment of extrapulmonary TB is essential. Awareness regarding symptoms of different forms of extrapulmonary TB and making diagnostic modalities such as CT scan, MRI or biopsy readily available through insurance schemes are some important measures to minimise the problem so that complications like paraplegia as in our patient with spinal TB can potentially be avoided.

  • global health
  • tb and other respiratory infections
  • tropical medicine (infectious disease)
  • bone and joint infections

https://doi.org/10.1136/bcr-2018-226098

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    Footnotes

    • Patient consent for publication Obtained.

    • Contributors SA and BB took care of the patient, BB conceived the idea of case reporting, SA wrote the first draft, BB reviewed the draft before finalising.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.