Patient with cutaneous leishmaniasis treated with miltefosine in an endemic area in Brazil

Abstract

Case presentation. The patient is a 45-year-old woman with an oval-shaped ulcer on the left thigh, with well-defined and raised borders, no discharge, no crust, and painless; she presented a lesion of 60 days of evolution, which started as a punctate papule of progressive increase in size and depth until it became an ulcer, four weeks after a three-day trip to a rural area endemic for American tegumentary leishmaniasis. Treatment. The diagnosis of localized cutaneous leishmaniasis was confirmed; consequently, the patient received outpatient treatment with miltefosine 50 mg orally every eight hours for 28 days, accompanied by clinical and laboratory follow-up. Clinical outcome. There were mild side effects, including nausea that subsided with treatment with ondansetron and omeprazole, and later hyporexia, which persisted until the end of treatment. There were no significant laboratory alterations. The patient was periodically evaluated according to the recommendations of the Brazilian Ministry of Health, and the lesion improved gradually, reaching a clinical cure on the 90th day.