(Coordinator : Dr Antonella Teggi - co-coordinator : Prof T Todorov).

From more than fifteen years we have investigated on medical treatment of cystic echinococcosis (CE) with mebendazole and albendazole.

The increased time of follow-up and number of treated patients let us observe different findings: sometimes hydatid cysts stop to grow and show further degenerative modifications after stopping treatment; sometimes cysts show relapses.

We considered as relapse: appearance of new cysts or exogen vesiculation; volumetric increase; appearance or increase of liquid component of the matrix; disappearance of the sign of detaching of membranes.

Relapse of hydatic cysts was observed in 113 out of 448 patients treated with benzimidazole carbamates (125 with mebendazole and 323 with albendazole) after 1-100 months from stopping treatment.Considering together cysts of patients treated with mebendazole and albendazole we observed a total of 163 relapsed cysts.

Relapse was observed more frequently in cysts with daughter cysts as reappearance of liquid areas than in type I cysts (55,2 % versus 30,6 %).The most part (78,5 %) of relapsed cysts were observed within 24 months after stopping treatment.Further treatment with benzimidazole carbamates of relapsed cysts was effective in more than 90 % of the cases.

Some cysts showed further relapses maintening higher responsiveness to chemotherapy.If you are interested in long term evaluation of chemotherapy of CE, join us in this network answering the following questionnaire.

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