Monday, October 12, 2015

Case of the Week 367

This week's case is a Giemsa-stained sputum specimen from a patient with abrupt onset of productive cough and expectoration of "salty-tasting" fluid. Images are shown at 400. and 1000x. Identification?




7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Protoescoleces of Echinococcus granulosus.
In the second image you can see the row of hooklets.
In our hospital (south american) this parasite is becoming more and more usual.

-HLCM fan.

Anonymous said...

Agree but then how could we differentiate it with E. multilokularis?

Anonymous said...

Agree with Echinococcus identification.

Florida Fan

Unknown said...

This may be a sample of hydatid sand (leakage from hydatid cyst which contains protoscolics and free hooklets from Echinococcus granulosus. Why it is not E. multilocularis? I think because E. multilocularis is usually sterile( no hooklets and protoscolics) and I do not think it can be found in the lung (usually it is in the liver).However, It could be E. vogeli or E. oligathus.
Yasir

Anonymous said...

Agree with Echinococcus spp. (Hooklets)

Lee

Anonymous said...

Protoscoleces of Echinococcus spp. (It could E. granulosis or multilocularis rather than vogeli or oligarthus which are very rare in humans)

Dima El Safadi

Anonymous said...

E.granulosis

The salty taste comes from the content of a ruptured cyst.

E.multilocularis doesn't form cysts