Cerebral tuberculomas: manifestation of extrapulmonary tuberculosis in an immunocompromised patient. A case report

Abstract

Tuberculosis (Tb) is, currently, the deadliest infectious disease and is caused by organisms of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex; the most common clinical manifestation is pulmonary involvement; however, it can also manifest as extrapulmonary affection in immunocompromised patients, especially in patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) chronic infection up to 20% of the cases, despite being on adequate antiretroviral therapy. Within the extrapulmonary manifestations, affection of the central nervous system by hematogenous dissemination occurs in up to 5%, however, the finding of tuberculomas, which is a form of central nervous system involvement, is rare and an important cause in secondary hydrocephalus in these patients. We present the case of a male patient with a history of HIV infection and meningeal tuberculosis, who presented dysfunction of his ventriculoperitoneal shunt and in the imaging study multiple tuberculomas were found, a cerebrospinal fluid study was performed where multi-resistant tuberculosis (MDR) was documented, therefore despite adequate management of Tb, tuberculomas developed.