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Case Report
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| Epigastric pain as the initial presentation of undiagnosed HIV and its associated pulmonary arterial hypertension |
| Yousef Usta1, Akram Ibrahim1 |
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1Internal medicine, Emory School of Medicine, Atlanta Georgia, USA.
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doi:10.5348/ijcri-2012-06-131-CR-4
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Address correspondence to: Yousef Usta, MD 3302 N 7th St Apt 248 Phoenix Arizona 85014 USA Phone: 6023089575 Email: yosusta@hotmail.com |
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| How to cite this article: |
| Usta Y, Ibrahim A. Epigastric pain as the initial presentation of undiagnosed HIV and its associated pulmonary arterial hypertension. International Journal of Case Reports and Images 2012;3(6):19–22. |
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Abstract
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Introduction:
Due to increase in survival of HIV positive patients on antiretroviral therapies, longer term complications of HIV infection have started to surface including HIV related pulmonary arterial hypertension (HIV-PAH). In the 1990's the occurrence of HIV-PAH was estimated to be at 0.5% (1:1200) in HIV positive patients which is 2500 times higher than in the general population (1-2:1,000,000) and seems to remain at the same level despite advances in diagnosis and treatment.
Case Report: A case of a 28-year-old African-American female presenting with abdominal pain, increased abdominal girth, weigh gain, and lower extremity swelling of one week duration is presented. She was not previously diagnosed with HIV. Upon admission she was diagnosed with HIV related pulmonary arterial hypertension World Health Organization functional class III. Conclusion: What makes our case unique, is the rarity of the disease entity, unique gastro intestinal presentation, young age and newly diagnosed HIV and associated pulmonary arterial hypertension. The presence of epigastric pain and increased abdominal girth should increase the suspicion of PAH with right heart failure. | |
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Key Words:
HIV, Pulmonary hypertension, Epigastric pain
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Author Contributions:
Yousef Usta - Substantial contributions to conception and design, Acquisition of data, Analysis and interpretation of data, Drafting the article, Revising it critically for important intellectual content, Final approval of the version to be published Akram Ibrahim - Substantial contributions to conception and design, Acquisition of data, Analysis and interpretation of data, Drafting the article, Revising it critically for important intellectual content, Final approval of the version to be published |
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Guarantor of submission:
The corresponding author is the guarantor of submission. |
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Source of support:
None |
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Conflict of interest:
Authors declare no conflict of interest. |
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Copyright:
© Yousef Usta et al. 2012; This article is distributed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any means provided the original authors and original publisher are properly credited. (Please see http://www.ijcasereportsandimages.com/copyright-policy.php for more information.) |
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