Internal Medicine Commons^™

When An Infected Meniscus Portends A Perforated Viscus, Michelle Hannon, Stephen Zachariah, Neha Bansal Etherington, Anusha Govind, Devin Weber, Bryan Hess

Division of Infectious Diseases and Environmental Medicine Faculty Papers

A 59-year-old woman with a status of post–renal transplant 7 years prior for autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease on tacrolimus and mycophenolate mofetil presented with subacute left knee and right wrist pain. She received local steroid injections to both areas as an outpatient without improvement in her symptoms. She had recently traveled to India, her home country, to visit relatives. Aspiration of the knee revealed 4+ acid fast bacilli on smear, and she was taken for surgical debridement. She was started on empiric antibiotics for presumed infection with rapidly growing mycobacteria. Her course was complicated by acute onset abdominal pain …