Monday, April 10, 2017

Case of the Week 441

This week's case was generously donated by Dr. Nipunie Rajapakse. The following object was passed in the stool of a teenage boy with recurrent fevers and constipation. His only travel outside of North America was Portugal and Hawaii. Treatment with an antihelminth was ineffective at alleviating his symptoms and follow-up stool exams were negative.

Identification?


10 comments:

Anonymous said...

The object superficial appearance mimics that of a Tenia so., However, there is no visible internal organs or external genitalia.
My guess is that the object is just partially digested food.
Florida Fan

Unknown said...

Onion skin!

Unknown said...

Parts of Tapeworms (cestoda)

Hans Naus said...

Not a parasite

Anonymous said...

It looks an awful lot like a Tapeworm, more like D. latum to me. However, usually tapeworms have a more opaque appearance, more whitish.

The first thing I would do with this specimen is poke it under a stereoscope. If it falls apart easily it is probably is some sort of vegetable matter/stool artifact (onion skin as others have said?). If it is tough and springy, I would then look for expelled eggs to aid in identification.

Michigan Micro

Sugar Magnolia said...

Not a parasite. Looks like vegetable matter (specifically, onion) to me.

Unknown said...

I am not a professional MD, but it looks like it has legs on its underside and it looks also like it has an opening at the shorter left part of it in the pic. I am going to take a shot at saying that this is a tapeworm type of parasite and not just debris as said in an earlier reply. I hope you let us know what it is if you find out!

Unknown said...

It is not a parasite. It seems to be small intestine of an animal, probably used for sausage tubing.
Ahmet Sahin

sena nabila said...

nice
Bahaya Minuman Alkohol

Anonymous said...

Dwarf tapeworm ?