1. Strongyloides stercoralis Hyper infection Syndrome
- Author
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Gopi Krishna Basavraj, Chaitanya Kumar Reddy Papireddy, and Sampath Kumar Karanam L
- Subjects
medicine.medical_specialty ,Exploratory laparotomy ,medicine.medical_treatment ,Disseminated infection ,Review Article ,Disease ,Anastomosis ,Gastroenterology ,Strongyloides stercoralis ,03 medical and health sciences ,0302 clinical medicine ,Internal medicine ,0502 economics and business ,medicine ,Gangrene ,biology ,business.industry ,05 social sciences ,Immunity ,medicine.disease ,biology.organism_classification ,Strongyloidiasis ,Acute abdomen ,Hyper infection syndrome ,050211 marketing ,030211 gastroenterology & hepatology ,Surgery ,Neurosurgery ,medicine.symptom ,business - Abstract
Strongyloides stercoralis is a helminth, widely distributed in tropical and subtropical countries. Its infestation in humans usually does not produce symptoms. However, in some patients, severe and life-threatening forms of this infection can occur, especially in immunocompromised individuals. Severe parasitic infection is triggered by any imbalance in the host’s immunity favouring the auto-infective cycle. This results in an increase in the intraluminal parasitic burden. In addition, tissue infestation is also very common. Clinical presentation is variable, and it is very difficult to diagnose clinically. Diagnosis requires a high index of suspicion. In some cases, the diagnosis is established only on histopathological examination of the excised tissue by the pathologist. Here, the authors report a case of an elderly male diabetic patient, who presented to the emergency department with the features of acute abdomen. On exploratory laparotomy, he was found to have the features suggestive of gangrene of small bowel. Resection of the gangrenous bowel was done, and end-to-end anastomosis was done as the rest of the bowel appeared to be normal. However, the patient died of multi-organ failure and septicaemia on the second postoperative day. The resected intestine showed tissue infestation of Strongyloides stercoralis on histopathological examination. In this review article, the authors summarize a case of hyper infection syndrome of strongyloidiasis and discuss the various aspects of Strongyloides stercoralis infection with emphasis on life cycle of the parasite and different clinical features of the disease.
- Published
- 2020
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