Recent Advances in the Diagnosis and Management of Abdominal Tuberculosis

Abstract

Abdominal tuberculosis and its protean manifestations still create a diagnostic challenge for clinicians and remain an important concern in the developing world. Crohn’s disease, which is being increasingly recognised in countries where intestinal tuberculosis is prevalent, needs to be differentiated as the two diseases resemble each other in their clinical presentation, and in their radiological, endoscopic, and histological findings. New diagnostic modalities and scoring systems have facilitated the differentiation of Crohn’s disease from intestinal tuberculosis with good accuracy. Randomised trials have shown 6 months of therapy to be equivalent to longer durations of treatment for patients with abdominal tuberculosis. This review focusses on the recent advances in diagnosis and management of abdominal tuberculosis.

Keywords

• abdominal tuberculosis (atb)
• acid-fast bacilli
• colonoscopy
• computed tomography (ct)
• intestinal tuberculosis (itb)
• polymerase chain reaction (pcr)