Article Text
Summary
The cancer immunotherapy field has had many promising developments in recent years. Checkpoint inhibitors are good examples of that. This new class of medications comes with a new constellation of side effects that require early recognition and management. Here we present a patient with metastatic adenocarcinoma on pembrolizumab who was admitted to the hospital for colitis. This was found to be an immune-related adverse event from pembrolizumab. We discuss our work-up and approach to the diagnosis, then highlight important treatment pearls for internal medicine physicians who are increasingly taking care of such patients.
- unwanted effects / adverse reactions
- immunological products and vaccines
- malignant disease and immunosuppression
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Footnotes
Contributors IM and MI participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content, including participation in the concept, design, analysis and writing of the manuscript. They both made substantial contributions to the work reported in the manuscript.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent Obtained.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.