Abstract

With increasing presentations of headaches following COVID-19 vaccination, we present one of the UK’s earliest proven cases of vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopaenia (VITT), with the aim of giving colleagues a case to compare other patients against. Our patient was a 48-year-old man who presented with frank haematuria, a widespread petechial rash, and headaches, 2 weeks after receiving the first dose of the Oxford AstraZeneca ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine. He had a platelet count of 14×10⁹/L and an extensive cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) with subarachnoid haemorrhage on imaging. He developed localising neurological signs and experienced a cardiopulmonary arrest. He was successfully resuscitated and transferred to a tertiary care centre for urgent thrombectomy. This case illustrates how the diagnosis of VITT should be based on the platelet count and imaging—and how patients with VITT should be cared for in centres with urgent neurosurgical and interventional radiology services.