title: Respiratory failure and pharyngeal hematoma as presenting signs of Moschcowitz's syndrome: a case report and literature review.
abstract: Moschcowitz's syndrome or thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura is a quite rare pathology in childhood, being, as a matter of fact, more frequent among adult people. Often it is hard to distinguish from other pathologies in children both for its rare incidence and for the presence of clinical forms that are very heterogeneous and difficult to be classified. We report on a 13 year-old girl suffering from Moschcowitz's syndrome, in whom respiratory failure and pharyngeal hematoma were the first sign of the disease follone by jaundice, hematoma of the arm and limbs. The girl was treated with plasmapheresis with an improvement of her general condition. Since then we have followed up the girl for two years without any reappearance of the symptomatology. To our knowledge this is the first report of this peculiar presentation in children.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine and Surgery, University of Catania, Catania, Italy.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Cocuzza
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Pavone
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bonfiglio
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Chiaramonte
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Iurato
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Falsaperla
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Velardita
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Serra
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001772:Blood Cell Count; D005260:Female; D006406:Hematoma / Q000209:etiology*; D006801:Humans; D010608:Pharyngeal Diseases / Q000209:etiology*; D010956:Plasmapheresis; D011697:Purpura, Thrombotic Thrombocytopenic / Q000150:complications* / Q000175:diagnosis; D012131:Respiratory Insufficiency / Q000209:etiology*; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed