IMAGE ARTICLE | VOLUME 2, ISSUE 7 | OPEN ACCESS DOI: 10.23937/2474-3682/1510052

A Two Valve Fungic Endocarditis in a Lupic Patient

Filipa Brito Mendes1 , Ana Paula Silva1,2, Nelson Tavares3 and Pedro Neves1,2

1Nephrology Department, Algarve Hospital Centre, Portugal

2Department of Biomedical Science, Algarve University, Portugal

3Department of Cardiology, Algarve Hospital Centre, Portugal

*Corresponding author: Filipa Brito Mendes, Nephrology Department, Algarve Hospital Centre, Portugal, E-mail: filipabritomendes@gmail.com

Published: August 18, 2016

Citation: Mendes FB, Silva AP, Tavares N, Neves P (2016) A Two Valve Fungic Endocarditis in a Lupic Patient. Clin Med Img Lib 2:052. doi.org/10.23937/2474-3682/1510052

Copyright: © 2016 Mendes FB, et al. This is an open-access content distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

A 38-years-old female patient, with the diagnosis of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus and antiphospholipid syndrome (APS). Under hemodialysis for the last 3 years (by a humerus-cefalic arteriovenous fistula) after an 8 years period of peritoneal dialysis which started 4 years after renal transplantation in a patient with Lupus Nephritis.

Important to mention is the mechanical mitral valve due to severe stenosis for rheumatic fever and a long term corticotherapy, in the moment with 10 mg/day of prednisolone.

The patient went to the urgency department complaining of abdominal pain, mainly in epigastric region and left lower quadrant, associated with non-productive cough and rhinorrhea. She stayed hospitalized with the diagnosis of Pneumonia.

Because clinical outcome was not the expected with maintenance of complains, high inflammatory markers and sustained fever, further investigations were done. It was identified multiple splenic infarctions (probably in context of APS) and hemocultures were positive for Candida Parapsilosis. The patient was submitted to an echocardiogram which revealed the presence of vegetation (Figure 1, Figure 2 and Figure 3) in the mechanical mitral valve as well as vegetation in the tricuspid valve (Figure 1).

Initially Amphotericin was started, although not tolerated by the patient with symptomatic side effects. After this, endovenous fluconazol, according to cultures sensitivity, was maintained during 10 days. Because there was no favorable response, with persistent positive hemocultures to Candida P., it was switched to anidulafungin during 30 days. Maintained Candida P. isolated in hemocultures which was controlled only after 10 days of re-initiating Fluconazol, post-hemodialysis. The patient maintained Fluconazol during 11 months.

After one year, there is no evidence of vegetation in tricuspid valve and regression of dimensions in the vegetation of mechanical mitral valve.

 

Figure 1: The upper two arrows show the 2 vegetation present in the mechanical mitral valve while the lower arrow shows the vegetation in tricuspid valve.

Figure 2: Measurement of one of the two vegetations of mechanical mitral valve.

Figure 3: A big dimension vegetation of mechanical mitral valve.