[Digestive disorders and Legionnaires' lung disease. Accompanying signs or visceral location?]

Abstract

Digestive disorders in Legionella pneumophila pneumonia such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, are common; they are clinical arguments to suspect this bacteria to be responsible for this pneumonia. In this case-report, a patient with pneumonia due to Legionella pneumophila serogroup I presented in the follow-up with signs of enteritis with ascites. We looked ahead in literature who made us discover the multiple organ involvement that may happen in Legionnaires' disease. Diagnostic procedures consist in simple tests as ultrasonography, abdominal computerised tomography, that show inflammatory disease signs and sometimes ascites. Exceptionally, Legionella pneumophila has been demonstrated with direct immunofluorescent microscopic study, in inflammatory colitis pieces with haemorrhagic necrosis in different stage processes. Pathogenesis could be explained by the systemic spread of the organism and formation at distance of necrotising enteritis focus. It is initiated by necrotising factors of bacterial origin and hypersensitivity reactions (type I and III).