A clinical observation was done on 82 cases of the amebic liver abscess diagnosed by the needle aspiration or surgical drainage, and treated at the Daegu Fatima Hospital as an inpatient during the six-year period from July 1967 to June 1973.
The results were as follows:
1. The ratio of the number of the amebic liver abscess to the total number of patients admitted to the internal medicine during the same period was 0.9% as a whole and the yearly ratio had been decreased year after year from 1967 to 1970, but has been increased since 1971.
2. There was a predominance of the male showing the male to female ratio of about 4:1 with the highest age incidence in, the 3rd and 4th decades.
3. The disease occurred more frequently in this spring and the summer, but less in the autumn.
4. The most frequent complaints were pain (95. 1%) in the right upper quadrant of the abdomen, right lower chest, and epigastrium, and fever (95. 1%). The most frequent physical finding was the tenderness on the right upper quadrant of the abdomen (74.4%) and the next hepatomegaly (73.2%) Jaundice was seen only in 3.7% of cases.
5. The wrong tentative diagnosis was done in 19.5% of cases, and the more frequent diseases among these were carcinoma of the liver and cholecystitis.
6. The anemia below 12.0 gm% of hemoglobin was seen in 74.4% and the leukocytosis over 10, 000/mm3 in 67.1% of cases.
7. Among the liverfunction tests, serum bilirubin elevation over 1.5 mg% was seen in 7.3%, serum alkaline phosphatase over .5 Bodansky units in 19.0%, the SGOT over 100 units in 11.3% and reversed A/G ratio of serum protein in 63.4% of cases.
8. The abnormal chest X-ray findings were seen in 64.6% of cases and the most frequent finding was the elevation of the right diaphragm (54.8%).
9. The complications were seen in 15.8% of cases and these were hepatobronchial fistula (8.5%), pyothorax (4.9%) and peritonitis (2. 4%).
10. Of the sixty-eight patients treated by needle aspiration, 85.3% of the cases were given the therapeutic needle aspiration 1-5 times. The total amount of the pus aspirated of less than 1,000 ml during the hospital stay was noted in 78% and over 3, 000 ml in 2.9% of cases.
11. The mortality rate in these cases was 2.5%
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