Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Tertiary Care Centres Must Do More For Patients With Unknown Conditions: Lessons Learned From A Child, Guido Filler, Lana Rothfels

Patient Experience Journal

Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS) is a debilitating disease with a commonly non-uniform and unspecific presentation that makes diagnosis difficult. A twelve-year-old girl, recently diagnosed with Addison’s Disease, was referred to paediatric nephrology for Fludrocortisone-induced nocturnal hypertension. She had fallen off the growth curve for both height and weight from the 50th percentile at birth to below the 5th percentile at presentation. The severity and multitude of her symptoms, including muscle weakness, poor body control, dizziness, light headedness, persistent fatigue, excessive sweating, tachycardia, chronic constipation and recurrent infection hinted at the unusual nature of this case of Addison’s. At the …