Nerve abscess in children and adults leprosy patients: analysis of 145 cases and review of the literature.

The authors report on their experience of nerve abscess in leprosy. They have found that in the last 5 years there is a significant increase in this type of pathology, at a time when the total number of patients has decreased in adults. Nerve abscesses are, recently, noticed in a large number of children and teenagers. This was not the case 7-9 years ago. Abscesses were excised from one hundred forty-five nerves in one hundred and sixteen patients between May 1985 and May 1994, out of which, 14 patients (12.6%) were operated during the period May 1985 to December 1989 and 102 (87.93%) in the period January 1990 to May 1994. Children and teenagers account for 47% of all cases of nerve abscess in this series. The incidence of abscess in multiple nerves is high too in these groups. Abscess of cutaneous nerves is very common too (35% of cases) though rarely reported in the literature. There is a higher incidence of nerve abscess in male adults as compared to females. The authors believe that this sudden increase in neural pathology can be attributed, in part, to the extension of multidrug therapy (MDT) programmes without adequate infrastructure to detect and treat early neuritis.