[Results of 79 hepatic biopsies in untreated bacillary pleurs pulmonary tuberculosis patients].

Abstract

The authors report 79 needle biopsies of the liver, using a Menghini needle, carried out as routine in untreated cases of pulmonary tuberculosis with positive sputum. Apart from the histological study, the authors carried out, in 30 cases, a bacteriological study of the liver fragment. The bacteriological and histological results are reported here in detail, then compared with those in the world literature. No significant correlation was found between the histological type of the suggestive hepatic lesions, e.g. follicular appearances or appearances of nodular küpferian hyperplasia and the radioclinical variety of pulmonary tuberculosis, e.g. parenchymatous, pleural or miliary. The authors emphasize the significance of each type of pathological lesion encountered, in particular, the appearance of nodular küpferian hyperplasia or intralobular, lymphohistiocytic islets, which seem to them remarkable by their relative frequency and their chararacter fairly suggestive of tuberculosis. In spite of the low number of pathological appearances obtained in these liver biopsies, the present study nevertheless permitted a few interesting conclusions on the blood spread of the tubercle bacillus and the significance of changes in the Küpfer system during common pulmonary tuberculosis.