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©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Apr 28, 2015; 21(16): 4925-4932
Published online Apr 28, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i16.4925
Published online Apr 28, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i16.4925
Hepatobiliary complications of alveolar echinococcosis: A long-term follow-up study
Tilmann Graeter, Department of Interventional and Diagnostic Radiology, University Hospital Ulm, 89081 Ulm, Germany
Franziska Ehing, Suemeyra Oeztuerk, Mark Martin Haenle, Wolfgang Kratzer, Thomas Seufferlein, Department of Internal Medicine I, University Hospital Ulm, 89081 Ulm, Germany
Richard Andrew Mason, Louis Stokes Cleveland Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Cleveland, OH 44106, United States
Beate Gruener, Section of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Immunology, Comprehensive Infectious Diseases Center Ulm, 89081 Ulm, Germany
Author contributions: Graeter T and Ehing F contributed equally to this work; Graeter T, Seufferlein T, Kratzer W and Gruener B designed the research; Graeter T, Ehing F, Oeztuerk S, Kratzer W and Gruener B performed the research; Ehing F, Oeztuerk S, Mason RA, Haenle MM and Kratzer W analyzed the data; and Graeter T, Ehing F and Kratzer W wrote the paper.
Ethics approval: The study was reviewed and approved by the local ethics committee of the University of Ulm.
Informed consent: Because of the retrospective and anonymous character of this study, the need for informed consent was waived by the institutional review board.
Conflict-of-interest: The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.
Data sharing: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Wolfgang Kratzer, MD, Professor, Department of Internal Medicine I, University Hospital Ulm, Albert-Einstein-Allee 23, 89081 Ulm, Germany. wolfgang.kratzer@uniklinik-ulm.de
Telephone: +49-731-50044730 Fax: +49-731-50044621
Received: October 23, 2014
Peer-review started: October 27, 2014
First decision: November 14, 2014
Revised: December 17, 2014
Accepted: February 5, 2015
Article in press: February 5, 2015
Published online: April 28, 2015
Processing time: 186 Days and 1.2 Hours
Peer-review started: October 27, 2014
First decision: November 14, 2014
Revised: December 17, 2014
Accepted: February 5, 2015
Article in press: February 5, 2015
Published online: April 28, 2015
Processing time: 186 Days and 1.2 Hours
Core Tip
Core tip: Approximately 10% of patients with alveolar echinococcosis experience hepatobiliary complications that occur on average 3.7 years (range: 0-41 years) following first diagnosis. Elevated hepatic transaminases in association with jaundice, abdominal pain, and weight loss are typical symptoms facilitating the diagnosis. Interventional endoscopic methods represent important options in these patients’ management. Even in cases of repeated interventions, the rates of complications and treatment-associated mortality are low. The average survival following onset of hepatobiliary complications and interventional treatment stands at 8.8 years.