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Amoebic appendicitis

Ibrahim M Zardawi, Joseph S Kattampallil and Jurgen W Rode
Med J Aust 2003; 178 (10): . || doi: 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2003.tb05335.x
Published online: 19 May 2003

To the Editor: We describe six cases of amoebic appendicitis, encountered during a 15-month period in the Pathology Department of the Royal Darwin Hospital. The patients were all Indigenous Australians and four of them came from remote communities. The average age was 24 years and five of the six were men. They all presented with abdominal pain, fever and right iliac fossa tenderness for up to 6 days. The clinical notes did not indicate the presence of pre-existing dysentery, and no faecal examination was undertaken. Recovery following appendicectomy was uneventful in all the cases. No further follow-up is available.




Correspondence: 

  • 1. Weinmann AJ, Spelman DW, Spicer WJ. Indigenous invasive amoebiasis in Australia. Aust N Z J Surg 1992; 62: 235-237.
  • 2. McCarthy JS, Peacock D, Trown KP, et al. Endemic invasive amoebiasis in northern Australia. Med J Aust 2002; 177: 570. <eMJA full text>
  • 3. Petri WA, Singh U. Diagnosis and management of amoebiasis. Clin Infect Dis 1999; 29: 1117-1125.

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