Acute Liver Failure Secondary to Pyogenic Hepatic Abscess.

Hepatic abscesses are rare and can be pyogenic or amebic. Pyogenic hepatic abscesses are treated with antibiotics, percutaneous drainage when larger than 5 cm, and rarely requires surgical treatment. Clinical and laboratory manifestations of pyogenic hepatic abscesses include fever, abdominal pain, and elevations in liver enzymes. There is little documentation that a pyogenic hepatic abscess can cause acute liver failure. We present a case of a patient who developed acute liver failure secondary to a 14 cm pyogenic liver abscess. The patient's hepatic function normalized with percutaneous drain placement and antibiotics.

Megestrol Acetate Induced Paradoxical Embolism in a Sickle Cell Disease Patient.

We report a case of a 43-year-old African American female patient with otherwise stable sickle cell disease (SCD) in which use of megestrol acetate for appetite stimulation quickly potentiated her prothrombotic state within just a few days. This resulted in infarcts involving the bilateral cerebral hemispheres suggestive of embolic infarcts and the patient was subsequently confirmed to have a patent foramen ovale (PFO). A widespread literature search in PubMed revealed that this is a rare case in the literature and that the effects of megestrol acetate use in patients with SCD have not been well studied. Future research should focus on the risks of initiating megestrol acetate therapy to develop an advanced risk assessment algorithm in patients with SCD as the risk of thromboembolism may far outweigh the potential benefits.