Abstract

Although esophageal tuberculosis is a rare disease throughout the world, esophageal tuberculosis should be included as one of differential diagnosis made in Korea where the prevalence of tuberculosis is still high. Esophageal tuberculosis might be mistaken for carcinoma due to lack of specific symptom, diagnostic study or pathologic diagnosis in clinical setting. The diagnosis would be difficult when esophageal ulcerative lesions or submucosal tumor are present, especially. When the result after a biopsy is not confirmative, the diagnosis can be made with the detection of mycobacteria by microbiologic study or polymerase chain reaction. We experienced three patients with esophageal tuberculosis; a 41-year-old woman with dysphagia, a 34-year-old woman with dysphagia and odynophagia, and a 52-year-old woman with epigastric pain. Esophageal submucosal tumors were found in all the patients with upper gastrointestinal endoscopy. The diagnosis of tuberculosis were finally made by removal of tumor and biopsy or tuberculosis polymerase chain reaction. They all got improved after the treatement with anti-tuberculosis medications. Herein, we report 3 cases of esophageal tuberculosis with review of related literatures. (Korean J Gastrointest Endosc 2005;30:80⁣85)

• Keywords: Esophageal tuberculosis, Submucosal tumor, Polymerase chain reaction