[Clinical approach to hydatid disease in uremic patients]

Uremic patients in hemodialytic treatment have the same opportunity to be affected with hydatid disease as healthy people. However, because these patients usually have an immunodeficiency syndrome, it is always necessary to evaluate correctly the most common immune diagnostic procedures; furthermore the clinical approach and successive surgical treatment must evaluate carefully electrolyte and acid-base balances, the cardiovascular system, hemostasis and energy intake. Authors, in this paper, report 8 cases of hydatid disease in as many patients during a period of 27 years. At the beginning they describe diagnostic and therapeutic management; later they emphasize the necessity of a careful immunological diagnostic evaluation (which is often falsely negative), and of radiological, ultrasonographic and scintigraphic diagnosis. They conclude by emphasizing that uremic patients with hemodialytic treatment survive with disease and although a surgical approach of hydatid disease is not really different from others it could be insidious not to consider the peculiar immunological and clinical metabolic state of uremic patients also to perform a correct treatment.