Stroke in <i>Mycoplasma pneumoniae</i> pneumonia: a clinical case

Abstract

Mycoplasma pneumoniae (MP) cause more than 40% of community- acquired pneumonia. Sometimes extrapulmonary manifestations may occur: in particular, central nervous system (CNS) symptoms occur in 10% of hospitalizations for MP. A young woman was being admitted to our intensive care unit (ICU) for respiratory failure and suspected stroke, ten days after flu-like syndrome. The patient was already intubated, sedated, in controlled mechanical ventilation. At admission brain computed tomography (CT) was negative, chest CT showed bilateral pneumonia with interstitial thickening. After 36 hours, brain CT showed an extensive hypodense cortico-subcortical area with frontal-parietal-temporal left seat. The positivity of IgM for MP and PCR in nasopharynx led to the diagnosis of MP pneumonia complicated by stroke: 15 days after admission, a post-ischemic status was manifested by aphasia, dysphagia, right brachio-crural hemiplegia. In our paper we evaluated possible major neurological complications, up to stroke, in MP respiratory infection. We concluded that, although they are actually rare, neurological symptoms up to cerebral ischemia in young people with MP pneumonia, are to be considered.