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Case Report

Acute Mesenteric Ischemia: An Unusual Cause of Hematemesis in a 48 Year Old Man

Renaldo Pavrey, Farzin Vajifdar

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Indian Journal of Emergency Medicine 8(4):p 157-160, October-December 2022. | DOI: https://doi.org/10.21088/ijem.2395.311X.8422.10

How Cite This Article:

Renaldo Pavrey, Farzin Vajifdar/Acute Mesenteric Ischemia: An Unusual Cause of Hematemesis in a 48 Year Old Man/Indian J Emerg Med 2022;8(4):157–160.

Timeline

Received : August 23, 2022         Accepted : September 03, 2022          Published : December 25, 2022

Abstract

Acute mesenteric ischemia is always an emergency and is associated with a high mortality rate. It predominantly affects elderly people with an underlying cardiovascular disorder. Although most of the cases present with sudden onset of abdominal pain, atypical symptoms including mental confusion, bacteremia, and gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding may be the foremost presentation.1 GI bleeding may be the dominant symptom in rare cases and almost always presents as occult or overt lower GI hemorrhage. We report the case of a 48-year-old man who presented to the Emergency Department (ED) of a university teaching hospital in northern India with the complaints of progressive abdominal pain and hematemesis. Our reasons for highlighting this case are: • The unusual presentation of an often clinically subtle disease made this case especially challenging to diagnose. • The presence of confounding factors and “red herrings” caused further delay in the diagnosis of mesenteric ischemia. • Mesenteric ischemia continues to remain a provisional diagnosis of low suspicion in a middle aged individual with abdominal pain and upper gastrointestinal hemorrhage presenting to the ED.

References

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Data Sharing Statement

There are no additional data available. All raw data and code are available upon request.

Funding

This research received no funding.

Author Contributions

All authors contributed significantly to the work and approve its publication.

Ethics Declaration

This article does not involve any human or animal subjects, and therefore does not require ethics approval.

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to the patients, their families, and all those who have contributed to this study.

Conflicts of Interest

No conflicts of interest in this work.

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Cite this article

Renaldo Pavrey, Farzin Vajifdar/Acute Mesenteric Ischemia: An Unusual Cause of Hematemesis in a 48 Year Old Man/Indian J Emerg Med 2022;8(4):157–160.

Licence:

Attribution-Non-commercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator.

Received Accepted Published
August 23, 2022 September 03, 2022 December 25, 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21088/ijem.2395.311X.8422.10

Keywords

HematemesisGastrointestinal hemorrhageMesenteric ischemia

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Timeline

Received August 23, 2022
Accepted September 03, 2022
Published December 25, 2022

licence

Attribution-Non-commercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator.


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