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Case Reports
. 2020 May 9:2020:5101234.
doi: 10.1155/2020/5101234. eCollection 2020.

Alveolar Echinococcosis in Children

Emilija Jonaitytė  1 , Martynas Judickas  1 , Eglė Tamulevičienė  2 , Milda Šeškutė  2
Affiliations
Case Reports

Alveolar Echinococcosis in Children

Emilija Jonaitytė et al. Case Rep Pediatr. .

Abstract

Alveolar echinococcosis (AE) is an infectious zoonotic disease that is caused by Echinococcus multilocularis. The disease is generally identified accidentally because of the long asymptomatic period, has a malignant behaviour, and mainly occurs in the liver. Usually it is diagnosed in adults and is very rare in pediatric patients. We report two cases of AE and 1 differential case between AE and cystic echinococcosis (CE) in children: two of them had lesions in the liver and one had rare extrahepatic presentation of a cyst in the spleen. All our patients received chemotherapy with albendazole because surgical treatment was not recommended. The children were followed-up from 10 to 30 months and no significant improvement was seen. In this report we discuss the difficulties we faced in the treatment and follow-up of these patients. We also review the main clinical manifestations, general diagnostic methods, and treatment options of AE according to the current literature.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
MRI scan of the patient no.2 after 1 month of treatment: 4 polycyclic cysts in S5/6, S7, and S8 of the liver.
Figure 2
Figure 2
US scan of the patient no.3 before treatment: cysts in S7/8 (on the left), a cyst with fibrinous septum in the left lobe of the liver (on the right).
Figure 3
Figure 3
MRI scan of the patient no.3: multiple cysts up to 2.7 cm in S8/5, S7/6, S7, and S2/4 of the liver.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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