Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-1-2022

Comments

This article is the author's final published version in Otolaryngology Case Reports, Volume 24, September 2022, Article number 100457.

The published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xocr.2022.100457.

Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Inc.

Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

Abstract

Rationale: Few case series have described the simultaneous development of angioedema in patients with coronavirus 19 disease (COVID-19). Most of these reports were described in at-risk patients for developing bradykinin angioedema. Therefore, we aim to describe 5 African American patients who developed simultaneous COVID-19 and angioedema.

Methods: This was a case series of hospitalized patients with simultaneous angioedema and COVID-19 infection in a single center from May 2020 to February 2022. We used descriptive statistics. The study was approved by the institutional review board.

Results: Their median age was 55 years (range 28-66); all patients were African American, and 3/5 were males. All patients developed angioedema within a week of hospitalization. Two subjects had prior history of ACEI-related angioedema but were not exposed to ACEI recently, whereas 1 subject was on chronic lisinopril therapy for the last 3 years. All patients had orofacial involvement; the most common locations were lips (5/5) and tongue (3/5). None had histaminergic features of angioedema (either skin rash or peripheral eosinophilia). 4/5 subjects had respiratory symptoms and chest imaging features of COVID-19 pneumonia, whereas 3/5 subjects developed severe COVID-19 infection. Most patients were treated with standard combination of H1 and H2 blockers, and corticosteroids. A total of 2/5 subjects were intubated; one patient developed refractory tongue swelling, received tracheostomy for extubation, and died due to COVID-19 pneumonia. The median length of angioedema improvement was 44 hours (range 20-168 hours). The median length of hospital stay was 15 days (range 1-49).

Conclusion: We described 5 cases of angioedema in COVID-19 patients that shared risk factors and features of bradykinin-related angioedema.

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Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

PubMed ID

35782753

Language

English

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