Echinococcosis: typical patient in Latvia

Although Latvia is geographically relatively closely located to known endemic regions of echinococcosis, so far there was no recent large-scale data on the incidence, diagnosis and treatment of this disease our country. During study data was analysed from 116 patients with echinococcosis diagnosed in the period between 1999 and 2015. Geographically, we identified two regions in Latvia where echinococcosis is more common. The typical echinococcosis patient is female and aged between 56 and 65 years. The majority of patients lives in a rural household and owns dogs or livestock. The most frequent complaints at the moment of admission were abdominal discomfort or tightness, abdominal pain, malaise, jaundice and skin itching. Ultrasound analyses showed that echinococcosis manifested more often as solitary lesion in the right hepatic lobe in an otherwise unchanged liver, the size of lesion was < 5cm in 40.5 % of cases. Analyzing the relationship between the stage of echinococcosis at the time of diagnosis and the end of the observation period, it can be concluded that the stages increase on average by 0.2 points. A correlation was observed in the treatment stage of cystic echinococcosis in treated patients. If criteria for treatment efficacy was antibodies then it was more likely that effect was positive if treatment has been within 1 year of diagnosis, has ever been a 6-month course of therapy, treatment was given every year and if duration of treatment and the number of courses increase, the likelihood of antibody clearance increases. As echinococcosis is relatively common in Latvia, the diagnostic and treatment algorithm should be improved in order to increase effectiveness of available resources and thus to improve respective control strategies.