CHENNAI: Kauvery Hospital Chennai announced the successful treatment of a unique case of dengue presenting with a stroke syndrome. The 42-year-old man was brought to the hospital with complaints of acute dysphasia — a speech disorder. It can occur suddenly after a stroke/head injury or develop slowly from a growing brain tumour or other diseases of the brain.
Speaking about the patient, Dr Sivarajan Thandeeswaran, senior consultant, Stroke & Neurovascular Medicine said, “Before consulting us, the patient had fever with chills for 3-4 days which subsided with self-medication. He then developed speech difficulties — he could not articulate words properly. In view of his younger age, we were wary about diagnosing a stroke condition, which is generally a disease of older people.” An MRI scan, however, showed an infarct and hyperintense lesion in the splenium of the corpus callosum. Only a handful of such cases are reported so far in the medical literature.
“We immediately started administering medications such as Aspirin and Statin to treat his condition. We tested the patient for both COVID-19 and Dengue due to platelet count drop. The Covid test turned out to be negative. In the Dengue test, Dengue IgM and IgG turned out to be positive, which indicated that likely exposure to Dengue recently.
He was treated for his dengue infection. He had no fever any more, and his platelet count increased within two weeks to 1,13,000. “The treatment was challenging as we had to treat dengue, and help the patient recover his platelet count, while stroke treatment called for medications such as Aspirin that has anti-platelet properties, shared Dr Sivarajan.