ABSTRACT
Parasite and host factors may equally contribute to the development of invasive amebiasis. Invasive amebiasis is a potentially lethal condition, second only to malaria as a cause of death due to protozoarian disease on a global scale. This chapter deals with the clinical aspects of the intestinal and the most important extraintestinal forms of amebiasis. Three additional distinct clinical forms of serious intestinal amebiasis, occurring mostly in adults, are fulminant colitis, ameboma, and amebic appendicitis. The cardinal syndromes in classic intestinal invasive amebiasis of the colon are dysentery and diarrhea with clinical features that allow to distinguish them from other entities. The clinical expression of these amebic syndromes, present in approximately 90 percentage of the invasive intestinal cases, depends on the localization of the lesions in the rectosigmoidal or in the upper regions of the colon. Careful assessment of the pain may certainly give a clue as to the localization of the abscess in the liver.
