His lips & tongue swelled up hours after taking a blood pressure med he’d been on 10 years - lisinopril.
📍What’s the treatment?
📍Is it an allergy?
📍What’s a common thought error?
(Pic w Perm - trigger warning tweets 2 & 4)
2/ Angioedema is potentially life-threatening
It’s very scary to see the tongue & lips swelling up so much and the airway compromised.
The patients are watched in the ICU so that intubation and even tracheostomy can occur emergently if required.
What’s the Dz Mechanism?
3/ Is ACE-inh induced Angioedema an allergy?
NO! It’s not an IGE mediated allergic reaction.
💥 Pro Tip:
People can get angioedema from allergies, but they would be very itchy, and my patient was not itching at all.
That's because it's mediated by a buildup of bradykinin.
4/ So why do they nearly always get epinephrine, benadryl & steroids in the ED? @EM_RESUS teach us!
Those agents do NOT ⬇️ swelling when angioedema is due to ACE inh.
There's no medical tx for this other than time & possibly the need for an intervention to maintain the airway.
5/ My patient got those meds & did well, but the treatment & outcome we're unrelated.
Once he’s safely through the swelling, the main thing is to make sure he never gets an ACE inh for BP again. Switch him to other antihypertensives, even angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs).
6/ Why is the swelling located in the tongue & face?
Bradykinin causes leakage of plasma proteins around the throat & lips, which are super thin & easily expandable.
I’m not aware that bradykinin receptors are clustered there?
Teach me if you know more, please.
7/ The science of this was first worked out by Dr. Nancy Brown & colleagues @VUMC_Medicine, which helped us differentiate between IGE mediated & bradykinin mediated edema.
3/ Believing those with #LongCOVID complaints is our 1st basic show of support!
“If people tell us they have new thinking & memory issues, I think we should believe them rather than require that they meet certain severity criteria.”
Dr. Apple UCSF
1/🧵 A sister & two brothers were born into a wonderful family. They led an exciting life. 4 months ago, 2 of them died young of #COVID, unprotected. The surviving sibling decided to get Vaxxed but stopped after 1 shot & is now on ventilator (CT scan) w COVID pneumonia. Read on…
2/ A teaching Point: This CT scan shows “holes” in his lung (red lines above & arrows👇) surrounded by white pneumonia.
The holes are previously damaged lung from smoking.
Millions in society, victims of misinformation, remain unprotected & the vaccine could save their lives.
3/ Let’s all do our part to teach others.
When polio hit, almost everyone wanted to be vaccinated despite the disclosed risk of getting polio from the live attenuated vaccine.
This vaccine is even safer and yet the untruths spewed by many have tainted our uptake.
2/ SHOCKER: Amazing work scientifically. Every med student is taught to gauge Cardiovascular risk history: Smoking, Obesity, HTN, Cholesterol, Family History…
Add COVID to the list. Solid data from @NatureMedicine of US Veterans used >11M contemporary + historical controls!
3/ Main figure shows both hazard ratios & excess burden per 1,000 persons of highlighted types of problems like strokes, V Tach & #POTS, myocarditis, heart attacks, heart failure & blood clots in 154,000 people 30 days after COVID vs. 5,637,647 contemporary controls.
2/ Dr. Farmer started his vocation of #SocialJustice by serving the beautiful people of Haiti, the world’s 1st Black republic. He looked in their eyes & saw their needs…HIV, malaria, Tb, hunger, poverty, neglect.
In response he took action…
(paintings below by my daughter)
3/ Paul Farmer is the central figure in Kidder’s 📚 “Mountains Beyond Mountains.” If you haven’t read it, order now.
Through his drive and insights we learned to say “Yes” to bringing modern medicine to the most remote settings of human life on Earth 🌍
Prevent this w 3 steps:
📌Avoid #COVID by Vax & Mask
📌Avoid severe COVID by Paxlovid & Monoclonal Ab
📌👇 read here about PICS & how to reduce injury in the ICU
2/ Here’s what you must know if you get too sick & land in an ICU.
History Lesson 📝
In the past, too many decisions in #CriticalCare were guided by fear. We oversedated patients for too long out of worry they might self-extubate & pull off restraints.
That’s happening again 🤮
3/ We kept patients immobilized due to an overly conservative approach to fall prevention that precluded us from attempting to walk them early. We kept families away from patients, treating loved ones as visitors rather than members of the healing plan.