Article Text

Reminder of important clinical lesson
Heterotopic pregnancy: a growing diagnostic challenge

Summary

This report describes a 26-year-old female who presented at 5 weeks of gestation with intrauterine pregnancy after gonadotrophin stimulation and intrauterine insemination. The patient complained of abdominal pain, abdominal distension and nausea diagnosed as moderate ovarian hyper-stimulation syndrome (OHSS) with early pregnancy and was treated accordingly. The patient was readmitted at 7 and 9 weeks of gestation with persistent left lower abdominal pain. At 9 weeks’ gestation she also had a low grade fever and since the pelvic ultrasound showed a left tubo-ovarian mass she was treated for pelvic infection. The follow-up ultrasounds in the 5th, 9th and 12th weeks showed a normal intrauterine pregnancy in addition to a persistent left adnexal mass without any suspicion of a heterotopic pregnancy. The diagnosis of heterotopic pregnancy became possible only at 13 weeks of gestation during laparotomy when the right fallopian tube showed a leaking ectopic pregnancy. A right-sided salpingostomy was carried out. The intrauterine pregnancy is still ongoing without complications.

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request Permissions

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.