Hottois E, Weichselbaum L, Guérisse F, Doriath V
Rev Med Brux. 2014 Mar-Apr;35(2):72-7.
A 47-year-old patient is admitted to the hospital for visual disorders and paresthesia on her left hemiface and her superior left limb. Symptoms appeared about a month before. The patient is currently under treatment for a non metastatic cervical adenocarcinoma, of stage IIIb according to FIGO. Further exams show bilateral hypodense cerebral lesions of unknown origin despite many complementary tests, among which a transthoracic and transoesophageal echocardiography, autoimmune and infectious testings. During her hospitalisation, the patient's condition worsens on the neurologic and cardiac levels in spite of a wide-spectrum empirical antibiotherapy initiated with the presumed diagnosis of infectious endocarditis. The repetition of cardiac echocardiographies ends up showing a nodule on the mitral valve. The context of neoplasia, negative hemocultures and serologies, lead us to evoke the diagnostic of marantic endocarditis even though this kind of complication was rarely described in cases of cervical neoplasia. An anticoagulant treatment is therefore initiated and the patient's state will progressively improve, at least at first.
