ABSTRACT
Behcet's disease is inflammatory vasculitis that has a high incidence of mortality in patients with pulmonary artery aneurysm (PAA) formation. Traditionally, patients with Behcet's disease and PAA rupture undergo invasive surgical management. Surgical intervention; however, has been shown to have high complication, failure, and mortality rates. It has become a more contemporary practice to utilize the interventional embolization of pulmonary artery aneurysms (PAAs) in patients with Behcet's disease and other various etiologies because of its inherent minimally invasive nature and decreased risk for complications. The management paradigm for treating PAAs has shifted toward endovascular embolization even in severe or emergent cases where surgical management was once thought to be the standard. The following case is a testimony to the practicality of interventional embolization in the setting of a symptomatic patient presenting with PAAs.
ABSTRACT
We report a case of a 29-year-old female with the family history of medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) presenting with hematuria and tachycardia, who was found to have bilateral adrenal masses on abdominal computed tomography and biochemical testing compatible with pheochromocytoma. Iodine-123 (I-123) metaiodobenzylguanidine (MIBG) scintigraphy for preoperative planning prior to planned adrenalectomy revealed incidental synchronous unifocal MTC, along with expected bilateral adrenal pheochromocytomas. Pathology confirmed these findings, and subsequent genetic testing confirmed a rearranged during transfection proto-oncogene mutation on exon 11, confirming the clinical diagnosis of multiple endocrine neoplasia 2A (MEN 2A). The unexpected incidental finding of synchronous MTC highlights the importance of considering MEN in the differential diagnosis when encountered with newly diagnosed pheochromocytoma and highlights the utility of I-123 MIBG scintigraphy in diagnostic workup of newly diagnosed pheochromocytoma.
ABSTRACT
We present a case of a 79-year-old immunocompromised female admitted for abdominal pain and sepsis, who had an abdominal computed tomography (CT) showing distal gallbladder fundus wall thickening, pericholecystic edema, and a right posteroinferior hepatic abscess. Subsequent hepatobiliary scintigraphy with Tc-99m diisopropyliminodiacetic acid showed gallbladder filling of the proximal gallbladder fundus, yet no radiotracer filling of the distal gallbladder fundus. Further correlation with the initial CT showed a partial gallbladder stricture and a resultant altered morphology resembling a dumbbell-shaped gallbladder. Percutaneous cholangiogram also confirmed this dumbbell morphology. Nonfilling of radiotracer into the distal end of the dumbbell gallbladder correlating with CT findings of focal gallbladder inflammation indicated that there was a focal inflammation suggesting a distal dumbbell gallbladder cholecystitis. This case demonstrates a unique finding of focal inflammatory pathology involving an anatomic variant - the dumbbell-shaped gallbladder, and the challenges this anatomic variant presents in hepatobiliary scintigraphy image interpretation.
ABSTRACT
We present a case study of a 56-y-old man who was admitted with acute abdominal pain and was found to have retroperitoneal hematoma from a ruptured duodenal aneurysm. 99mTc-diisopropyliminodiacetic acid cholescintigraphy showed incidental absent transit of radiotracer into the distal duodenum and severe enterogastric reflux, thought to be secondary to duodenal obstruction from the hematoma. Findings were confirmed on esophagogastroduodenoscopy, and the patient improved after subsequent gastrojejunostomy.
