You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Unusual presentation of more common disease/injury
Vanishing polyuria and respiratory failure
  1. Fabio Ruggieri1,
  2. Alessandro Chiesa2,
  3. Kathleen Schorn1,
  4. Klaus Strobel3,
  5. Marco Maggiorini2,
  6. Christoph Schmid4
  1. 1Department of Internal Medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
  2. 2Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Medical Intensive Care, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
  3. 3Department of Radiology, Division of Nuclear Medicine, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
  4. 4Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
  1. Correspondence to Fabio Ruggieri, statale113{at}hotmail.com

Summary

A 44-year-old man with headache, sweating, subfebrile temperature and profound fatigue was found to have hypercalcaemic crisis with renal failure. Despite standard therapy, calcium levels remained high, he became anuric and developed multi-organ failure with acute respiratory distress syndrome requiring high ventilatory support, norepinephrine, dobutamine and continuous veno-venous haemodiafiltration. Ectopic calcification was found in the lungs, in the thyroid, kidneys, heart and stomach. A large parathyroid adenoma was then removed. When last seen, 11 months after surgery, the patient no longer required oxygen, and total lung capacity had returned to normal.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bcr.10.2009.2416

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.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Competing interests None.

    • Patient consent Obtained.