Hepatobiliary tuberculosis

Tuberculous involvement of the liver as part of generalized military tuberculosis is well known. It is said to be found in 50-80% of all cases dying from pulmonary tuberculosis (1). However, localized tuberculosis of the liver as a clinical entity and producing large nodules or abscesses have been considered exceedingly rare, even in areas where tuberculosis is relatively common. Leader (2), in an extensive review of the world literature in 1952, documented only 80 cases of hepatic tuberculosis with large abscesses or nodules. Other publications deal with localized tuberculous involvement of the hepatobiliary tract in isolated case reports (1-8). In order to learn more about the clinical manifestation and course of this disease, we therefore prospectively evaluated our total experience on hepatobiliary tuberculosis during the last two decades of our practice.