J Postgrad Med
-
Case Reports
Multiple extubation failures following a rhino-enteroviral infection: A unique case report in a pediatric patient.
This case report reviews the hospital course of a 15-month-old girl admitted to the PICU for acute respiratory failure due to enterovirus infection; who subsequently had multiple extubation failures secondary to acute transverse myelitis. This rare presentation highlights the importance of assessing the neurological status in a patient with rhino-enteroviral respiratory infection and of considering acute transverse myelitis as an etiology for difficulty with extubation.
-
Headache in women in their late forties can be primary or secondary. We report a 48-year-old female with chronic slowly progressive left temporal headache for 1 year. She also had ipsilateral eye pain and facial numbness for 1 month, with restricted abduction in the left eye and diplopia. ⋯ Magnetic resonance (MR) imaging revealed a 2 cm × 2 cm × 1.7 cm enhancing dumb-bell-shaped mass lesion with mild restricted diffusion in the Meckel's cave projecting into cavernous sinus with alanine, myoinositol and glutamine peaks on MR spectroscopy. Intradural debulking was done; lesion was confirmed by histopathology and patient was cured of her symptoms. An algorithm for diagnosing this entity at the bedside is presented.
-
A 15-year-old boy presented with fever, skin, and oral lesions for 4 weeks. The cutaneous lesions were suggestive of subacute cutaneous lupus erythematosus and erythema multiforme. ⋯ He subsequently developed neurological manifestations and was diagnosed to have neuropsychiatric systemic lupus erythematosus. We report this case for the unusual occurrence of a rare entity like Rowell syndrome in an adolescent male with co-existence of neuropsychiatric systemic lupus erythematosus.
-
Therapies used to tide over acute crisis of COVID-19 infection may lower the immunity, which can lead to secondary infection or a reactivation of latent infection. We report a 75-years-old male patient who had suffered from severe COVID-19 infection three weeks earlier and who had been treated with corticosteroids and convalescent plasma along with other supportive therapies. At time of discharge he had developed leukopenia which worsened at 1-week follow up visit. ⋯ Both COVID-19 and cytomegalovirus are known to cause synergistic decrease in T cells and NK cells leading to immunosuppression. The patient made complete recovery with a course of intravenous ganciclovir and fluconazole. Persistent leukopenia in high risk and severely ill cases should give rise to a suspicion of COVID-19 and cytomegalovirus co-infection.
-
Atypical presentations of supraventricular arrhythmias constitute a diagnostic challenge which are not frequently reported in literature. Swallowing-induced supraventricular arrhythmia (SI-SVA), which was first described in 1926, is an intriguing presentation of supraventricular tachycardia and occurs during a wet or solid swallow. A 67-year-old man presented to our outpatient clinic complaining from recurrent episodes of sensation of palpitations and short duration pressure on his chest while swallowing since the last 2 weeks. ⋯ The patient was successfully treated with amiodarone. The main cause of SI-SVA is not known. Cross-talk of nerves during the impulse propagation might be the underlying cause of this phenomenon.