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A 72-year-old woman with an uncorrected tetralogy of Fallot presenting with possible pulmonary endocarditis: a case report

2013; BioMed Central; Volume: 7; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1186/1752-1947-7-150

1752-1947

Pedro A. Sousa, Walter Santos, Nuno Marques, Pedro Cordeiro, Rui Ferrinha, Salomé Pereira, Ana G. Almeida, Ilídio de Jesus,

Coronary Artery Anomalies

Tetralogy of Fallot is one of the most common forms of cyanotic congenital heart disease and in the absence of surgical correction it has an elevated early mortality, with most patients dying in childhood. The authors reported this case because of the unusual course of an uncorrected tetralogy of Fallot. There are only a few reports of patients with an uncorrected tetralogy of Fallot who reach an advanced age and to the best of our knowledge this is the first case report of a possible endocarditis in a patient with an uncorrected tetralogy of Fallot who is older than 70 years. The authors present a case of a 72-year-old Caucasian woman with uncorrected tetralogy of Fallot who was admitted with fever and heart failure to our Cardiology Department with possible infective endocarditis. The longevity of this patient is probably due to the association between a large ventricular septal defect, a balanced subpulmonary stenosis and to the presence of systemic hypertension. After empiric antibiotic therapy, the patient was discharged and no surgical intervention was performed due to her previous benign evolution.