[Importation of cholera from Turkey. Case report of cholera acquired in Istanbul]

Following a short holiday in Istanbul, a 41-year-old man developed severe infectious enteritis accompanied by exsiccosis, hypokalemia and renal insufficiency. The patient was initially treated symptomatically under the assumption that he had traveller's diarrhea or Campylobacter enteritis. Finally, cholera vibrios were detected in several stool samples. Although Turkey is not considered to be endemic for cholera, a number of cases originating there have now been diagnosed in Germany. For the diagnosis of cholera, special microbiological expertise and techniques are required, and these are apparently not available in every medical laboratory. In view of the increasing spread of cholera worldwide, and the penchant of the German population for travelling abroad, diarrhea occurring after a visit to a foreign country should always prompt the physician to consider the possibility of cholera and to request relevant microbiological examinations of stool samples in a specialized laboratory.