Search

A 40-year-old man presented to the emergency room and was evaluated in the internal medicine department for unexplained weight loss, asthenia, anorexia and night sweats over the previous 2 months. After a loculated pleural effusion was identified on thoracic computed tomography, purulent fluid was drained from the lung and Fusobacterium nucleatum was isolated. The patient was successfully treated for 27 days with amoxicillin-clavulanic acid. This was an atypical presentation of a common micro-organism implicated in lung infections.

In this case, a 76-year-old female presented with 3–4 days of fever with no other localizing signs. Notably, she had had an untreated Fusobacterium bacteraemia approximately 8 weeks prior to admission. She underwent abdominal imaging which demonstrated a liver abscess and had percutaneous drainage of the same. Blood and pus cultures both grew Fusobacterium nucleatum, which is an unusual organism to be associated with a liver abscess, especially in an immunocompetent host with no risk factors for this condition. Interestingly, this patient did not have any history of dental work, instrumentation, liver function test (LFT) abnormalities and no extrahepatic source for the abscess. This case highlights the importance of having a high index of clinical suspicion for an occult source of infection and emphasizes the importance of following up on cultures even after discharge of a patient, since anaerobic infections such as those caused by Fusobacterium can have a largely indolent course.