[Embolization of the lung in echinococcosis (author's transl)]

Four months before her death of right heart failure, a 38-year-old woman with a known inoperable echinococcosis of the liver developed fever, increasing eosinophilia and pleuropneumonia. After improvement of the clinical, radiological and laboratory parameters under steroid medication, two months before her death hemoptysis and multifocal perfusion defects in the lung scintigram as a sign of pulmonary embolism occurred, for which heparin therapy was introduced. At autopsy a recurrent embolization due to echinococcus cysts with extensive displacement of the arterial pulmonary blood circulation were found.