The Authors Reply

Excerpt

We thank Dr. García-Díaz and colleagues for their critical comments and appreciate the interesting discussion, which might help to increase sensitivity to tuberculosis in developed countries. As Diaz et al. pointed out, gastrointestinal tuberculosis (TB) is caused by ingestion of TB bacteria or systemically from pulmonary infection or during miliary TB.1 The patient presented did not have a history for pulmonary TB nor established risk factors or classic symptoms for miliary TB.2 Furthermore, we did not have any evidence for extracolonic disease in laboratory tests, imaging during surgical exploration, or histologic examinations. We agree with Diaz et al. that the route of infection remains unclear. However, the most probable diagnosis in this patient with a large colonic lesion and corresponding symptoms remains intestinal TB.1 Considering the low probability of miliary TB and the missing impact on the treatment of this patient,1 more invasive diagnostics did not seem reasonable. In addition, we doubt that the suggested biopsies would prove the route of infection. …