Tuberculous Peritonitis: The Closer You Go, the More Confused You Get

Excerpt

We read the article entitled “Comparison between Laparoscopy and Noninvasive Tests for the Diagnosis of Tuberculous Peritonitis” by Hong et al. [1] with great interest. The authors presented a retrospective study of 60 patients who underwent diagnostic laparoscopy for either undiagnosed ascites (n = 19) or a condition that needed to be differentiated from peritoneal carcinoma (n = 41). Forty-one patients were diagnosed with tuberculous peritonitis (TBP). The positive and negative results of diagnostic laparoscopy were compared with ascitic deaminase levels >30 U/l and ascitic lactate dehydrogenase levels >90 U/l. The authors concluded that laparoscopy with combined biopsy is the most sensitive and the quickest method for diagnosing tubercular peritonitis. …