False-positive urine beta-HCG in a woman with a tubo-ovarian abscess.

Modern urine beta-human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) assays that use enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) technology are sensitive and specific for diagnosing pregnancy, both intrauterine and ectopic, and have become indispensable to the practice of Emergency Medicine. A urine HCG test is often relied on by the Emergency Physician as a critical component in the diagnostic regimen of a patient with a possible ectopic pregnancy. We report a case of a false-positive urine beta-HCG test in a patient with a ruptured tubo-ovarian abscess. Though false-positive pregnancy tests with tubo-ovarian abscesses have previously been reported with older methods of HCG detection, we believe that this is the first case where the pregnancy test was the modern ELISA type. The mechanism for the false-positive reaction in this case is unknown, but time may show that the ELISA test kit, like its predecessors, may occasionally give a false-positive reaction in this class of patients.

[Clinical, radiological and bacteriological study of pulmonary tuberculosis with bacteria showing drug resistance]. / Contributii la studiul clinic, radiologic si bacteriologic al tuberculozei pulmonare cu germeni cu chimiorezistenta primara.

The authors have investigated two groups of patients of young age suffering from tuberculosis with germs showing primary resistance to chemotherapeutic agents (61 cases), and with germs displaying sensitivity to these agents (64 cases). The following conclusions have been reached: tuberculosis with germs showing primary drug resistance did not display onset modalities, clinically and radiologically, that differed significantly from other types of tuberculosis; sputum conversion is more slow in patients with resistant germs than in those with sensitive germs in the first two months of treatment, but following application of the treatment according to the data resulting from the antibiogram, this differences quickly disappeared. The presence of a smaller number of complete recoveries and of a surplus of doubtful recoveries can be explained in the same way in this group of patients: the final results are similar in both groups of patients, evidencing that the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis due to germs showing parimary drug resistance does not give rise to particular problems.