[Epidemiology of extrapulmonary hydatid cysts: 265 Tunisian cases]

The authors wanted to analyze the epidemiological features of extrapulmonary hydatid cysts and compare their results with those reported in literature.Two hundred and sixty-five cases of extrapulmonary hydatid cysts collected from 1990 to 2007 were retrospectively studied.One hundred and one male and 164 female patients (sex ratio M/F=0.61 mean age 38.7 years) were included. In our series, hydatid cysts involved mainly the kidney (24.1%), the central nervous system (22.6%), the liver (19.6%) and the spleen (11.3%).Contrary to published data, our results show that hydatid cysts of the kidney and of the central nervous system are more frequent than hepatic location which ranks 3rd. Such unusual results may be due to a selection bias.