Chronic hepatointestinal schistosomiasis: a case report and review of literature

Abstract

Schistosomiasis is a chronic enteropathogenic disease assignable to blood flukes of the genus Schistosoma. The illness afflicts roughly 240 million human beings globally. The chronic state attributed to the infection arise because of granuloma creation either in the intestine, liver or the bladder. This is a case report based on a patient who presented with an acute abdomen in need of an emergency surgery. The diagnosis could only be made after the Pathology report on the surgical specimen. This is a case report of a 53-year-old-female with no past medical history, presented to the emergency department with an abdominal pain, hematochezia, diarrhea and weight loss. The blood work revealed elevation of inflammatory parameters and the computed tomography (CT) scan suggested a complicated acute appendicitis versus a complicated either cecum or a redundant sigmoid colon neoplasm. The patient underwent an exploratory laparotomy followed by a right colectomy with primary anastomosis, right salpingectomy and a sigmoidectomy with a terminal colostomy. It is essential to emphasize the significance of early identification, diagnosis and treatment of schistosome illness to impede or defer the succession to advanced stage, although occasionally can be an obscure malady, with a delayed arrival of diagnostic features, whomever the diagnosis is incredibly difficult on imaging, being most of the times made by a pathologist, as so, it can mimic several other surgical problems.