Therapy for Whipple's disease should be continued for a minimum of 1 year, and the regimen should include an agent or agents that achieve acceptable concentrations in the central nervous system, given the likelihood of recurrence at this site. Clinical follow-up of proven cases of Whipple's disease should be conducted for a minimum of 10 years after discontinuation of therapy, given the potential for late relapses. Polymerase chain reaction analysis is preferred rather than endoscopy when evaluating for disease recurrence.
(1) Background: Intravesical instillation of therapeutic Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) is the standard of treatment for non-muscular invasive bladder cancer. Although the exact immunomodulatory effects of BCG therapy in non-muscular invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) are still unclear, it has been considered a safe and effective treatment with the largest to-date report of complications citing minimal side effects, none of which included arterial involvement; (2) Methods: A systematic literature review was performed using PubMed, Cochrane, Medline, and Google Scholar from database inception to March 2021. Only eligible studies reporting aneurysm formation in adult patients with a history of BCG immunotherapy and no previous vascular pathology were included; (3) Results: A systematic literature review was conducted, highlighting 17 reports suggestive of BCG-induced mycotic aneurysm development. We added a case of a 78-year-old male, 30 months after last BCG-instillation, with a mycotic abdominal aneurysm yielding Mycobacterium tuberculosis with pyrazinamide resistance culture.; (4) Conclusions: Concluding results suggest a higher incidence of vascular complications from BCG intravesical therapy in the treatment of non-muscular invasive bladder cancer than previously reported. Recommendations are made to emphasize further research of this immunotherapy complication to facilitate the creation of guidelines for diagnosis and management of these patients.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.