An unusual case of bacillary angiomatosis in the oral cavity of an AIDS patient who had no concomitant tegumentary lesions – case report and review

Walter de Araujo Eyer-Silva, Pedro Eugênio Mendes Arena Soares, Marcelo Costa Velho Mendes de Azevedo, Guilherme Almeida Rosa da Silva, Dario José Hart Pontes Signorini, Rogerio Neves-Motta, Jorge Francisco da Cunha Pinto, Lívia Machado Moura, Rodrigo Panno Basílio-de-Oliveira, Luciana Ferreira de Araujo, Alexsandra Rodrigues de Mendonça Favacho, Elba Regina Sampaio Lemos

Bacillary angiomatosis (BA) is an angioproliferative disease of immunocompromised patients that usually presents as vascular tumors in the skin and subcutaneous tissues. It is caused by chronic infections with either Bartonella henselae or B. quintana. Oral cavity BA is exceedingly rare and even rarer without simultaneous cutaneous disease. We report herein the case of a 51-year-old HIV-infected man who presented severe odynophagia and an eroded lesion on the hard palate that progressed to an oronasal fistula. No cutaneous lesions were recorded. Doxycycline led to complete resolution. To the best of our knowledge, only six previous cases of oral BA without tegumentary disease have been previously reported and none of them progressed to fistula.