Forearm intramuscular tuberculosis of flexor digitorum profundus: a case report

Abstract

Tuberculosis is one of the most commonly occurring infectious disorders in the developing countries like India, which literally can affect any organ and system. Primary tuberculous myositis is used to describe the clinical situation in which the most prominent lesion in the course of haematogenous tuberculosis involves the muscle and not the fact that the infection occurred primarily in the muscle. Tubercular pyomyositis is the least frequent extra spinal musculoskeletal tuberculosis reported in literature. We came across a 15 year old female without any known primary pulmonary or lymphoid foci who presented with a swelling and pain over right forearm since 3 months. After running all the radiological investigations and nerve conduction studies and taking under consideration the various differentials of the swelling, finally the swelling was excised and histopathology of the excised specimen was performed which suggested that the swelling was due to primary tuberculosis of the muscle and the underlying subcutaneous tissue and after that patient received anti tuberculosis regimen for 9 months and no recurrence of the disease was noted till date. This rare case is presented with review of literature.

Extrapulmonary tuberculosis presenting as a dumbbell tumour of the chest wall

“…Skeletal muscles are not known to get involved even in cases of disseminated tuberculosis (7) as skeletal muscle is considered to be an unfavorable site for the survival of mycobacteria reasoning out why this type of TB is rare (7,8,9). According to literature though rare, the skeletal muscles which were involved in the course of TB were the pelvic muscles, anterior abdominal wall muscles and paraspinal muscles where the infection was due to secondary spread from bone or joint infection (7,9,10). In such a background, the primary infection of the Latissimus dorsi muscle is an unusual form of tuberculosis.…”