Computer Tomography (CT) Characteristics of Pulmonary Cystic Echinococcosis.

Introduction: Cystic echinococcosis (CE) is a common zoonosis worldwide. The two most frequent location of CE are liver and lung. Confirmatory diagnosis of CE is routinely performed sung imaging methods such as computer aided tomography and nuclear magnetic resonance in humans.

Aim: to investigate CT scan imaging of patients with pulmonary CE in Masih Daneshvari Hospital from 2011 to 2017.

Matarial and methods: This descriptive-analytic study was carried out on patients with pulmonary CE referring to Masih Daneshvari Hospital. By using the convenience sampling, 195 cases were selected from eligible patients. The data collection tool was a researcher-made questionnaire that included demographic, clinical and laboratory information. Data were analyzed using SPSS software version 20.

Results: In this study, 84.1% and 15.9% of patients were diagnosed using surgical method and CT scan, respectively. Our findings indicated CE was most commonly located in liver (28.2%) and spleen was considered as the lowest location (3.1%). Furthermore, cough was the most common clinical symptom of patients. The lower right lobe opacity was found to be higher, while and Lingula was the least frequent.

Conclusion: According to the findings of this study, surgery is the most important diagnostic and cough method as the most common clinical symptom of the disease. Since the CE with atypical symptoms is relatively common, physicians should always consider the lung CE in differential diagnosis of localized radiological images.