Isolated involvement of the spleen is a rare manifestation of childhood tuberculosis.
The rare occurrence and presence of nonspecific clinical features often pose diagnostic
challenges even in countries where tuberculosis is endemic. Splenectomy is often performed
for establishing the diagnosis or achieving a cure in combination with antitubercular
therapy (ATT). In this report, we describe a boy who presented with nonspecific symptoms
and was detected to have a well-defined lesion in the spleen on ultrasonography. The
diagnosis of tubercular splenic abscess was made after line probe assay for the detection
of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and cytomorphology of the aspirated material. The tubercular abscess showed complete
healing after 9 months of four-drug ATT.
Keywords
tuberculosis - tubercular splenic abscess - extrapulmonary tuberculosis - children
- fine-needle aspiration cytology
