Case Report
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Hepatol. Mar 27, 2015; 7(3): 633-637
Published online Mar 27, 2015. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v7.i3.633
Unusual presentation of severely disseminated and rapidly progressive hydatic cyst: Malignant hydatidosis
Aya Hammami, Olfa Hellara, Walid Mnari, Chaouki Loussaief, Fethia Bedioui, Leila Safer, Mondher Golli, Mohamed Chakroun, Hammouda Saffar
Aya Hammami, Olfa Hellara, Fethia Bedioui, Leila Safer, Hammouda Saffar, Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, University Hospital Fattouma Bourguiba, 5000 Monastir, Tunisia
Walid Mnari, Mondher Golli, Department of Radiology and Medical Imaging, University Hospital Fattouma Bourguiba, 5000 Monastir, Tunisia
Chaouki Loussaief, Mohamed Chakroun, Department of Infectiology, University Hospital Fattouma Bourguiba, 5000 Monastir, Tunisia
Author contributions: Hammami A and Hellara O collected the data; Mnari W wrote the manuscript; Safer L and Saffar H critically revised the manuscript and contributed to the manuscript writing; Loussaief C, Bedioui F, Golli M and Chakroun M supervised the manuscript; all authors approved the final version of the manuscript.
Ethics approval: The authors declare that no experiments were performed on humans or animals for this paper.
Informed consent: The authors declare that no patient data appears in this article.
Conflict-of-interest: The authors declare that there are no conflicts of in terest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Olfa Hellara, MD, PhD, Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, University Hospital Fattouma Bourguiba, Rue du 1er Juin 1955, 5000 Monastir, Tunisia. olfa.hellara@rns.tn
Telephone: +216-98-639353
Received: May 7, 2014
Peer-review started: May 8, 2014
First decision: June 27, 2014
Revised: December 29, 2014
Accepted: January 9, 2015
Article in press: January 9, 2015
Published online: March 27, 2015
Core Tip

Core tip: The infection caused by the tapeworm Echinococcus granulosus (E. granulosus) leads to the development of hydatic disease. It is the most frequent mediterranean parasitic infection that commonly affects the liver and rarely involves multiple organs. The diagnosis is usually based on ultrasonography and serological markers. This paper reports an exceptional and confusing presentation of hepatopulmonary and splenic hydatidosis due to E. granulosus that caused diagnostic problems treated with chemotherapy, with favorable outcome.