CASE REPORT
Acute Pericarditis as the Primary Presentation of COVID-19 Infection followed by Guillain-Barre Syndrome in a Healthy Young Man: A Case Report
Giti Noghabaei1, Maliheh Arab2 , *, Sara Payami3, Behnaz Ghavami4
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2022Volume: 16
E-location ID: e187430642210190
Publisher ID: e187430642210190
DOI: 10.2174/18743064-v16-e221020-2022-8
Article History:
Received Date: 28/5/2022Revision Received Date: 26/8/2022
Acceptance Date: 7/9/2022
Electronic publication date: 12/12/2022
Collection year: 2022
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
Symptomatic COVID-19 infection most often presents as acute respiratory distress syndrome. Acute pericarditis and Guillain–Barré syndrome are rare extrapulmonary manifestations of this infection.
Case Presentation:
A 27-year-old man presented with chest pain, with negative troponin and typical electrocardiographic findings, resulting in a diagnosis of acute pericarditis. He had no respiratory symptoms, nor the chest computerized tomography (CT) scan findings of COVID-19, and his Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was negative. One week later, he developed clinical symptoms of Guillain-Barre syndrome, along with respiratory manifestations of COVID-19. His repeat chest CT scan and PCR test confirmed COVID-19 infection. After 17 days of hospital stay, he improved clinically and was discharged.
Conclusion:
This is the first case of acute pericarditis as the primary presentation of COVID-19 in the absence of respiratory symptoms and a clear chest CT scan, followed by the development of Guillain–Barré syndrome and respiratory tract manifestations of COVID-19. Clinicians should be aware of the extrapulmonary presentation of COVID-19 infection.
