Clinical case of mucormycosis in patient COVID-19. Case report

Abstract

The COVID-19 epidemic is being revealed from a new angle every month. In particular, with the appearance of the delta strain, mucormycosis began to manifest in some patients, which had previously been extremely rare. Mucormycosis is a rare, aggressive infection caused by filamentous fungi of the Mucorales family and associated with high morbidity and mortality rates. The main risk factors for the mucormycosis in patients with COVID-19 are diabetes mellitus and diabetic ketoacidosis, uncontrolled hyperglycemia and massive use of glucocorticoids, vascular damage, thrombosis, lymphopenia, which often occur against the background of COVID-19 and make a person vulnerable to secondary or opportunistic fungal infection. We present a clinical case of mucormycosis in a 21-year-old female patient with COVID-19-associated severe pneumonia and concomitant type I diabetes mellitus. The patient was hospitalized and received standard therapy during inpatient treatment, including glucocorticosteroids in accordance with the severity of the course of COVID-19. On the 12th day from the hospitalization, the patient's condition deteriorated significantly, and the visible changes in the skin and soft tissues of the face, characteristic of mucormycosis appeared. Despite the drug therapy correction, the patient died because of the acute respiratory failure in combination with septic fungal damage of the brain stem.