Tropical Travel Trouble 005 RUQ Pain and Jaundice
LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog - Emergency medicine and critical care medical education blog
aka Tropical Travel Trouble 005
Guest Post: Dr Branden Skarpiak – Global Health Fellow, Department of Emergency Medicine. UT Health San Antonio
A 35 year old male presents to your emergency room for right upper quadrant pain that has gotten worse over the last 2-3 days. He also describes associated nausea, vomiting, and fevers. He denies other abdominal pain, or change in his bowel or bladder habits. His wife notes that he has started to “look more yellow” recently. The patient denies alcohol, tobacco, recreational substances, or sexual exposures.
He recently returned from a backpacking trip through Guatemala and Honduras around 6 weeks ago. His wife is quite concerned because she read online about “a parasite that dissolves your colon and liver!”
Questions:
Q1. Is the patient’s wife right?
Answer and interpretation
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Sort of! Entamoeba histolytica is a protozoan parasite that can invade tissue, phagocytes cells, and cause cell lysis. It can affect most tissues in your body, but usually causes disease in the intestines and liver. Its name – histolytica—refers to disintegration and dissolution of organic tissues.
Entamoeba histolytica infections occur worldwide; an estimated 50 million people are infecte...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Neil Long Tags: Clinical Cases Tropical Medicine amebic amoeba amoebiasis amoebic dysentery amoebic liver abscess bloody diarrhoea e.dispar e.histolytica entamoeba histolytica Source Type: blogs
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