ISOLATED TUBERCULOSIS OF A SKELETAL MUSCLE

A case is described of tuberculosis in the muscle belly of abductor pollicis lougus in a 25-year-old Asian woman. The complaint was of swelling and, as there was no evidence of tuberculosis elsewhere, the diagnosis was not made until the lump was explored surgically. Journal of Hand Surgery (British Volume 1992) I7B: 235 Musculo-skeletal tuberculosis is not an uncommon problem in an orthopaedic practice. When encountered, it usually affects bones and joints (Hoffman, 1985). There have been sporadic reports of tuberculosis affecting skeletal muscle, either in a generalised form throughout one or more muscle bellies (Plummer et al., 1934; Lankhanpal et al., 1987) or as an isolated lesion within one muscle. The finding of an isolated muscle lesion can be with (Kulpati and Kamath, 1983) or without (Derkash and Makley, 1979) an obvious, usually pulmonary, primary focus. Other affected sites may include bursae and tendon sheaths (Hoffman, 1985; Lankhanpal et al.