Pseudoparasitosis due to accidental ingestion of chicken cecum

The mother of an eighteen months baby brought to the laboratory a round worm-like structure and claimed that it had passed in her child's feces. She mentioned that the child had no particular complaint other than difficulty in the passage of this structure through the small anal sphincter. The length of the worm-like structure was 10 cm by about 1.5 cm in its widest blind part and about 0.3 cm in its narrowest patent part [Figures 1-3]. There was a longitudinal line running on one side of its outer surface to which was attached shreds of fatty tissue [Figure 4]. It had a thick muscular wall and a body cavity, but didn't show the unique smooth configuration of a nematode. There was also brownish sand-like material coming out from the opening at the narrow end and sedimented in the bottom of the container. Microscopic examination of the sediment revealed numerous oocysts of coccidian protozoa of different sizes and early degrees of development [Figure 5]. Histopathological examination of paraffin sections prepared from the provided parasite-like structure and stained with haematoxylm and eosin, revealed parasitophorous vacuoles comparable in size containing developing merozoites in epithelial cells of a chicken's cecum [Figures 6 and 7]