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CC BY 4.0 · Surg J (N Y) 2022; 08(02): e123-e126
DOI: 10.1055/s-0042-1749123
Case Report

Primary Breast Tuberculosis Mastitis Manifested as Nonhealing Abscess

Huu Hoang 
1   Department of Oncology, Hue college of Medicine and Pharmacy—Hue University, Hue, Vietnam
,
Etienne El-Helou 
2   Department of Surgical Oncology, Institute Jules Bordet, Brussels, Belgium
,
Catalin-Florin Pop 
2   Department of Surgical Oncology, Institute Jules Bordet, Brussels, Belgium
,
Ammar Shall 
2   Department of Surgical Oncology, Institute Jules Bordet, Brussels, Belgium
,
Manar Zaiter
3   Department of Radiology, Institute Jules Bordet, Brussels, Belgium
,
Jessica Naccour 
4   Department of Emergency Medicine, Hopital Erasme, Brussels, Belgium
,
Tran T. H. Nguyen 
1   Department of Oncology, Hue college of Medicine and Pharmacy—Hue University, Hue, Vietnam
,
Xuan D. Ho 
1   Department of Oncology, Hue college of Medicine and Pharmacy—Hue University, Hue, Vietnam
,
Van C. Nguyen
1   Department of Oncology, Hue college of Medicine and Pharmacy—Hue University, Hue, Vietnam
› Author Affiliations Funding This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
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Abstract

Primary breast tuberculosis (TB) is a rare extrapulmonary TB mainly affecting young women of childbearing age from endemic countries. Its incidence is increasing in immunocompromised and HIV-infected people and with the emergence of drug-resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB). There are no specific clinical signs suggestive of this disease, it often presents as a hard mass or breast abscess. There is an overlap of features with other inflammatory, infectious, benign lesions, fat necrosis and malignant neoplasms of the breast. The detection of MTB remains the gold standard for diagnosis. Several other diagnostic modalities are used, with varying lack of sensitivity and specificity, and with a range of false negatives. A quarter of cases were treated solely on the basis of clinical, imaging or histological suspicion, without confirmation of the diagnosis. Therefore, we report the case of a young Vietnamese woman, presented for a nonhealing breast abscess, and diagnosed with breast TB based on the patient's ethnicity, histological findings, lack of clinical response to conventional antibiotic therapy, and a good clinical response to anti-TB treatment.

Keywords

breast abscess - mycobacterium tuberculosis - extrapulmonary tuberculosis - breast tuberculosis - case report


Publication History

Received: 14 January 2022

Accepted: 07 April 2022

Article published online:
14 June 2022

© 2022. The Author(s). This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, permitting unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction so long as the original work is properly cited. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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