Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis of the Spine With Bilateral Psoas and Pre- and Paravertebral Abscesses in an Immunocompetent Indian Female With Multiple Adverse Drug Reactions: The World's First Report.

Tuberculosis is prevalent in high-burden countries. Extrapulmonary drug-resistant tuberculosis is exceedingly rare. Simultaneous involvement of the spine with psoas muscles in the absence of pulmonary seeding with a drug-resistant strain of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in an adult female is never reported. A 33-year-old Indian female presented with complaints of chronic back pain for eight months. She was on antituberculous treatment for Pott's spine for six months. The diagnosis was challenging due to the paucibacillary nature of the disease, and it required a high index of suspicion backed by radiometric investigations, liquid culture, a line probe assay, and cartridge-based nucleic acid amplification of the pus. Further, her treatment was associated with multiple adverse drug reactions like a rise of QTcF (QT corrected for heart rate by Fridericia's cube root formula) on the electrocardiogram, peripheral neuropathy, and abnormal behavior (decreased awareness and anger outbursts with restlessness), which were addressed by a team of experts including a cardiologist, a psychiatrist, a neurologist, and an infectious disease expert. She was managed conservatively, with an 18-month-long antituberculous treatment, which was stopped after consultation with an orthopedist at a nodal drug-resistant tuberculosis center with the advice to consult the orthopedic outpatient department; however, she was lost to follow-up.