Peritoneal tuberculosis mimicking ovarian cancer

Abstract

Peritoneal tuberculosis is a frequent form of abdominal tuberculosis. As clinical and laboratory findings mimicking many other abdominal pathologies, especially ovarian cancer, differential diagnosis is difficult. Here, we report a woman presented with abdominal pain in her lower abdominal quadrant. There were uncertain bordered bilateral adnexial masses, ascite, peritoneal nodular thickening and lytic lesion with soft tissue component at 11th thoracal vertebra at computed tomography. CA 125 level was 445.7 U/ml and positron emission tomography was resulted in favour of metastasis for lesion at thoracal vertebra. The patient underwent expletory laparotomy with suspicion of ovarian cancer but peritoneal biopsy taken from nodular lesions was reported as caseating granulomatous inflammation in favour of peritoneal tuberculosis. As differentiation between tuberculosis and malignancy is too difficult, these two possibilities should be part of the differential diagnosis.

Keywords

• Peritoneal tuberculosis
• Ovarian cancer
• CA 125
• Ascite
• Caseating granulomatous infl ammation
• Adnexial mass

References

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