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Rare disease
CASE REPORT
Case report
Lemierre's syndrome: forgotten, but not absent
  1. Mandreker Bahall1,
  2. Stanley Giddings1,
  3. Krishni Bahall2
  1. 1 Department of Clinical and Medical Sciences, University of the West Indies., St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago
  2. 2 Department of Medicine, San Fernando General Hospital, San Fernando., Trinidad and Tobago
  1. Correspondence to Dr Mandreker Bahall, vmandrakes{at}hotmail.com

Summary

Lemierre's syndrome is rare, with no known reported cases in the Caribbean thus far. We highlight a case of a young woman who presented with diabetic ketoacidosis precipitated by oral pharyngeal sepsis, whose condition rapidly deteriorated within 24 hours requiring ventilation and administration of antibiotics. Her sepsis was accompanied by internal jugular vein thrombosis in keeping with a diagnosis of Lemierre's syndrome, which was treated aggressively with antibiotics, intensive care and mechanical ventilatory support in the intensive care unit. She made a full recovery. Though this is the first reported case in the Caribbean of this ‘forgotten disease’, it must not be forgotten because prognosis and outcome are markedly improved with prompt and aggressive treatment.

  • Infections
  • Warfarin Therapy
  • Medical Management

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/bcr-2017-221203

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors MB assisted in the planning, data acquisition, analysis and interpretation, management of case,writing and editing of manuscript. SG assisted in the management of case, data analysis and interpretation and editing of manuscript. KB assisted in data acquisition, analysis and interpretation, management of case and writing of manuscript.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent Obtained.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.