|
Rationale:
- The symptoms of GI anthrax can mimic many other diseases associated with bloody diarrhea.
- Inhalational anthrax can be associated with GI disease.
- Stool samples checked for common causes of infectious diarrhea may help to exclude anthrax.
- Rapid diagnosis of GI anthrax is crucial to improved chance of survival.
|
|
Evidence:
- Advanced infection with GI anthrax may present as sepsis syndrome, which can also occur with other GI infections such as C. difficile. In a Lebanese outbreak of GI anthrax in the 1960s, most patients presented with an acute abdominal syndrome. Most of the
patients in this outbreak died of overwhelming shock (24; 47).
- GI anthrax progresses quickly from nausea, vomiting, and malaise to GI bleeding, acute abdomen, and in some cases ascites.
These symptoms are nonspecific and mimic other GI illnesses (24; 31; 32; 47).
- In the Sverdlovsk outbreak of inhalational anthrax, 39 of 42 patients had evidence of GI disease. Pathologic specimens showed
B. anthracis infiltration of the liver and intestinal mucosa. The small intestine contained numerous submucosal hematomas (29; 33).
|
|
Comments:
|
| FAQs |
|
|
|
Barbara Robinson-Dunn, PhD has no financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies, biomedical device manufacturers, or health-care related organizations.
Nicholas John Vietri, MD, MS, editorial consultant, has no financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies, biomedical device manufacturers, or health-care related organizations.
Niklas Mackler, MD has no financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies, biomedical device manufacturers, or health-care related organizations.
Sandro Cinti, MD has no financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies, biomedical device manufacturers, or health-care related organizations.
Deborah Korenstein, MD, FACP, Co-Editor, PIER, has no financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies, biomedical device
manufacturers, or health-care related organizations. Richard B. Lynn, MD, FACP, Co-Editor, PIER, has no financial relationships
with pharmaceutical companies, biomedical device manufacturers, or health-care related organizations.
|
|
|
|
The information included herein should never be used as a substitute
for clinical judgment and does not represent an official position of
ACP. Because all PIER modules are updated regularly, printed web pages
or PDFs may rapidly become obsolete. Therefore, PIER users should
compare the date of the last update on the website with any printout
to ensure that the information being referred to is the most current
available.
|
PIER is copyrighted © 2012 by the American College of Physicians,
190 N. Independence Mall West, Philadelphia, PA 19106-1572, USA.
|
|
Anthrax
> Diagnosis
