CID 2000;31 (August) Brief Reports 619 Clinical and Radiological Features of South African Patients with Tuberculomas of the Brain

Intracranial tuberculomas are a rare complication of tuberculosis that typically occurs in immunocompromised patients not treated previously for tuberculosis. We iden-ti®ed tuberculomas in 12 patients (11 of whom were in-fected with human immunode®ciency virus) at a hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa. Responses to antituber-culous therapy were good, often despite the presence of large lesions, and surgery was not considered necessary in any of the patients. Extrapulmonary tuberculosis (TB) involving the CNS occurs frequently in patients infected with HIV [1]. However, the inci-dence of intracranial tuberculomas in HIV-infected patients is not well documented [2±4]. A bacteriological diagnosis of the lesions requires invasive techniques and is rarely justi®ed unless empiric therapy fails. With this limitation in mind, we investi