Friday, April 10, 2009

A 21-year-old Female with Acute Liver Failure and Hemolytic Anemia

Had an interesting case this month that my Blood Bank team was involved with. I've changed some of the information to protect her privacy.

A 21-year-old female presented with a 5 week history of fatigue, anorexia, and mild jaundice. She was previously healthy with no past medical history, no medications, and no drug use. The initial workup showed a normochromic, normocytic anemia (Hgb 11.5) and increased liver function tests and was negative for infectious mononucleosis and viral hepatitis. Just a few days after this basic workup her course worsened and she became more severely jaundiced and developed dark urine and right upper quadrant pain. She was admitted to a referring institution and the workup showed the following:

Afebrile and vital signs stable
Scleral icterus, jaundice, splenomegaly, and RUQ pain on exam

WBC: 13.5 H
Hgb: 6.5 L
Plt: 178
Creatinine: 2.2 H

ALT: 13
AST: 147 H
Alk phos: 17 L
Tbili: 42.9 H
Dbili: 12.6 H

INR: 3.1 H
Albumin: 2.3 L

LDH: 659 H
Haptoglobin: undetectable L
Retic: 11.79 H
Direct antiglobulin: neg.
Blood type: O+, Ab screen neg.

ANA: within normal limits
Serum pregnancy test: neg.

Does anyone have a diagnosis? I'll post it in a week with follow up photos in a new post and/or comment.

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