Case of the Week COW #8

CC: Altered Mental Status HPI: 50 -year-old Male with PMH of HIV, CVA and Meningitis presents to the Emergency Department (ED) for altered mental status. As per the patient’s girlfriend at bedside, the patient woke up confused and was not making any sense when he spoke. He even urinated on the floor but does not …

Brain pus

Having pus in your brain is a problem no matter how you cut it, but finding it in there can be a challenge. While the classic triad is usually fever, headache and a focal neuro deficit, this isn’t always present. Dave Traficante (@davetraf) just published a pretty cool case of bifrontal brain abscesses in the International Journal of Emergency Medicine of a gentlemen with this very problem. Interestingly, he didn’t have any focal neuro deficits, but he did have a very flat affect and could care less of the pus accumulating in his brain which coincided with the frontal lobe location of his abscesses.