Hepatocellular Carcinoma Mimicking Liver Abscesses in a Cirrhotic Patient with Severe Septic Shock as a Result of Salmonella O9 HG Infection

Abstract

We describe a case of severe Salmonella O9 HG sepsis with a mass in the liver, which was diagnosed as hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) by autopsy of the liver. The patient was a 67-year-old man with chronic high blood pressure. In addition, he was an alcoholic and had been drinking every day for many years. He had had a dinner of ‘sukiyaki’ with a raw egg two days before admission. The next morning, he had developed vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain. Salmonella O9 HG was found in the blood and stool cultures. In the computed tomography (CT) finding of the liver, there was a 2 cm early-enhanced mass with a multilocular structure, with ringed enhancement and daughter nodes. Since we thought that the mass was a liver abscess, we performed needle aspiration from the liver mass and were able to withdraw blood. Despite adequate antibiotic treatment, the patient died as a result of complications on the 55th day after admission. After the patient’s death, we conducted an autopsy. There were two HCC masses, a moderately-differentiated and a well-differentiated mass, as a result of alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver. As the HCC had multilocular cyst-like structures, which were fiber- and necrosis-rich, CT images of the liver masses resembled abscesses.

Keywords

• Salmonella
• Sepsis
• Hepatocellular carcinoma