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Key Clinical Message: Vincristine therapy can be effective in refractory Immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) following COVID-19 vaccination. Our case report highlights the need for further research to establish standard management guidelines for COVID-19-vaccine-associated ITP. Abstract: Adult immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) can occur as a rare complication following several viral infections or a rare adverse event or complication of vaccination. In this paper, we report a case of a 39-year-old male patient with severe refractory ITP that began 4-weeks after receiving his third (booster) dose of the COVID-19 vaccine (BNT162b2, Pfizer-BioNTech). He was given oral dexamethasone 40 mg daily for 4 days followed by prednisone at 1 mg/kg (85 mg daily) for 10 days. In the following weeks, we attempted several other lines of therapy to treat his ITP, including anti-RhD immunoglobulin, which, unfortunately, caused moderate hemolysis requiring packed red blood cell transfusion, intravenous immunoglobulin (given at a subtherapeutic dose of 0.4 g/kg for only 1 day since it was not available), rituximab, and eltrombopag. The patient, unfortunately, showed no response to any of these treatments. This was an indicator to initiate salvage therapy with vincristine 2 mg weekly for 3 weeks. The patient's platelet count started to increase remarkably during the third week of vincristine and normalized after 4 weeks. We review the findings, clinical characteristics, and management approaches that were reported in the literature regarding COVID-19-vaccine-induced ITP. More in-depth research is needed to delineate standard guidelines for the management of such cases. This report underscores the importance of resorting to vincristine and eltrombopag as great options for severe and refractory ITP related to the COVID-19 vaccine.
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OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to review the clinical characteristics and demography of Carpel Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) cases presented to a university hospital. METHODOLOGY: A retrospective study was done for 336 consecutive patients (290 females and 46 males), referred with a clinical diagnosis of CTS to the Neuro-diagnostic laboratory at King Abdulaziz University Hospital, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, between January 2007 and December 2010. All subjects had clinical evaluation and standardized nerve conduction studies (672 hands) performed by the same examiner. RESULTS: Carpal tunnel syndrome was confirmed in 640 hands (95.23%) with female predominance (86.3%). The mean age was 52.4 in females and 54.4 years in males with overall highest occurrence among the age group 45- < 55 years. Bilateral CTS was confirmed in the majority of the patients, i.e., 304(90.5%), and remaining were unilateral. Among unilateral pattern, 22 (68.8%) had right CTS and others had left CTS. Most of the patients were treated conservatively 85.4% while the rest had surgical decompression 14.6%. CONCLUSION: Overall predominant age group was 45-<55 years with female dominancy. Majority of subjects had bilateral CTS as well as conservative treatment was frequent.
