Postgrad Med J 2001;77:600-601
( September )
Self assessment questions
An elderly woman with chronic knee pain and abnormal chest
radiography
A A Karcic, V Maudar, E Karcic
Department
of Medicine, Nassau County Medical Center, New York, USA
Correspondence to: Dr
A A Karcic, Department of Cardiology, Nassau County Medical Center,
2201 Hempstead Turnpike, East Meadow, New York 11554, USA
Submitted 10 May 2000;
Accepted 23 June 2000
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
An 83 year old Portuguese woman presented to the hospital with
worsening chronic right knee pain, dull in nature, worse after a recent
fall and with weight bearing. She had a history of hypothyroidism and
chronic atrial fibrillation. Her medications included levothyroxine, digoxin, and warfarin. The patient had been an immigrant to the United
States 10 years previously and had not visited home since then.
The physical examination revealed a flexed and swollen right knee with
a moderate effusion but no surrounding oedema. A small skin opening
draining serosanguineous fluid was noticed in the popliteal fossa. The
laboratory findings included a raised erythrocyte sedimentation rate of
86 mm/hour and C reactive protein of 10.3 µg/ml. Other laboratory
tests were unremarkable. The patient's chest radiograph (fig 1) was
unchanged from an old x ray done four years
before, and it shows old right lower lung and hilar shadows.
| Figure Removed (Available Only in the Full Text) |
Aspiration of the knee, besides . . . [Full text of this article]
