Step 1: Understanding the Question:
The question asks which of the listed causes of an enlarged liver does NOT typically present with tenderness on palpation.
Step 2: Key Concept or Approach:
Tenderness over the liver usually reflects rapid capsular stretching from inflammation, congestion, or a pus collection. Conditions that enlarge the liver slowly, or where the pathology is more systemic than locally inflammatory, tend to give a non-tender liver.
Step 3: Working Through the Options:
Viral hepatitis inflames hepatocytes acutely, stretching Glisson's capsule and producing a tender, mildly enlarged liver. Right heart failure causes passive venous congestion of the liver as blood backs up through the hepatic veins, and this congestive enlargement is classically tender, sometimes pulsatile if tricuspid regurgitation is present. A liver abscess is a localised collection of pus that provokes marked local inflammation, giving a distinctly tender, sometimes point-tender liver. Typhoid fever does cause hepatomegaly as part of the reticuloendothelial response to Salmonella typhi bacteraemia, but this enlargement develops gradually and is characteristically non-tender, unlike the other three conditions.
Step 4: Conclusion:
Tender hepatomegaly is NOT seen in typhoid fever.