Filed under Nephrotic Syndrome
We already talked about the complications.Infections, not only the primary peritonitis but any infection. They are much more prone to infections because they lose also other complements, IgG’s etc. Hypovolemia, thrombosis. They can have acute renal failure. It’s not common but it can happen, and when it is very long-standing and not treated they can have malnutrition. The pathology on minimal change is called NIL disease, and this is “nothing in light”. It stands for nothing in light. And really is, unlike microscopy, there is no change. The only change is on electron microscopy. Effacement of these little projections that are called foot processes. Foot process effacement is the only change found on a biopsy of a minimal change.
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The care is supportive as well as specific. The supportive care is pretty obvious. Salt restriction when they are on steroids and they are still edematous. Albumin and Lasix, I mentioned, if indicated because of disfiguring edema or edema that doesn’t allow them to walk or oozing of serum or stuff like that. Not everybody needs to get albumin and Lasix. And you never give Lasix to a patient who is hypoalbuminemic without first increasing their oncotic pressure. That can cause even more thrombotic events.
The treatment is prednisone online pharmacy, that’s the drug of choice as we know; 2 per kilo per day, or 60 mg per meter square per day for six or four weeks. We’ve gone between the four and six weeks for different reasons, but four weeks would be okay. Daily, even with a good response within a week, you continue for a whole month and then every other day for another month. Some people taper, some people stop cold-turkey. There is no evidence that one way or the other is better. We teach the parents to check the urine and we have a sheet. They write down the proteinuria and the medicine dose and we get the sheet back the next time when we see them, and you see how it has responded. You don’t see the response so quickly in the urine dipsticks because they can spill 10 grams of protein a day in the beginning, that’s 4+ on the dipstick. They then go down to 2 grams for a day and it’s still 4+ on the dipstick. So they’ve improved a lot. What you see first is the diuresis really and edema going away. So that’s how they respond. Most of them will respond within two weeks, and then the rest will respond within a month. And 93% will respond. This is the treatment of the relapse. I won’t go into it right now. But 93% of minimal change patients respond to steroids. That’s what makes the diagnosis; 73% respond in the first two weeks, and 94% in 28 days. So there is a certain percentage of non-responders. Then there are the definitions of the different relapsers; frequent relapsers which are more than two in six months, or three in a year, or steroid-dependent. Those relapse when you taper the dose to a certain dose. This in treatment of relapsers, you taper the dose very slowly. As soon as you get to a certain dose they relapse. Those are steroid-dependent. And there are a small percentage who are steroid-resistant. They either have minimal change which is steroid-resistant, or they have another pathology. When we have one of these groups, that becomes a whole different story. They are more difficult and we have to go to second-line drugs, such as Cytoxan or chlorambucil, cyclosporine or high dose Solu-Medrol pulses. But that’s not minimal change usually.
Comments (0) Posted by Canadian Pharmacy on Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
Filed under Nephrotic Syndrome
I talked about this, clinical presentation. I didn’t mention that they can have such bad edema that there can be skin breakdown with oozing of fluid, such as in the scrotal area, the vulvar area in girls, and that would require admission and IV albumin to try and mobilize the fluids a little bit, out of the interstitium back into the vascular tree. Blood pressure is normal or low. We talked about it. The diarrhea, I mentioned because they can have intestinal edema, intestinal mucosal edema. The same as they have edema everywhere else, and they have those little diarrheal stools. That’s why I mentioned it in the case. Primary peritonitis is the most common, maybe not the most common complication, but a common complication, infectious complication of nephrotics. So whenever a nephrotic comes to the ER with abdominal pain, that’s first thing to rule out. Primary peritonitis. And for the Boards – I think they ask this quite a few times – the most common cause of primary peritonitis in nephrotic syndrome is pneumococcus. They can have E. coli or other causes as well, but if there is a question and that’s one of the answers, that’s the one to mark.
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Okay, another common complication, perhaps the most common nowadays, is thrombotic events, thrombosis. They are very hyper-coagulable, nephrotics, and they can have thrombotic emboli or just deep vein thrombosis. Any nephrotic shouldn’t have deep vein sticks or arterial sticks. They have a very high incidence of thrombotic events. The urine has massive proteinuria and we don’t have to do a 24-hour collection because we can just dipstick; 4+ equals nephrotic range proteinuria. You don’t really have to do a 24-hour collection to waste time. You start treatment, so this will be our indication of nephrotic range. And even in minimal change, there is a percentage of kids who have hematuria. Don’t forget that. It doesn’t mean that it’s not minimal change if you do find hematuria, but it’s much much more common in FSGS. So hematuria in a kid who is suspect for minimal change, I kind of put it on the back burner in case they don’t respond as well or have hypertension. So that would seem more that it is showing FSGS and not minimal change. I would really watch their response to therapy much more with worry.
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Blood tests, we already talked about. Now I talked about pseudohyponatremia but also there is hypocalcemia in the calcium that is measured, only because the albumin that the calcium is bound to is low. So there is this calculation. For every 1 gram of albumin below normal, to increase the calcium by 0.8. You know that calculation? Say an albumin is 4 and in the child it is 1, so it’ 3 below normal; 3×0.8 is 2.4. add that to the, say, 7.6 calcium that you got and really the calcium is 10. So those are things to remember. Because of the hypoalbuminemia or the hypercholesterolemia. Usually their hematocrit, hemoglobin and platelets are increased because they are very very concentrated.
Comments (0) Posted by Canadian Pharmacy on Monday, December 7th, 2009
Filed under Nephrotic Syndrome
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So this is a typical story of a kid with minimal change nephrotic syndrome. We don’t have to biopsy this child to know that it’s minimal change. The diagnosis is by the age, the response to treatment, and the relapse that will happen more than likely, after … we don’t know exactly when but more than likely in the next few months this kid will have a relapse. That’s minimal change. You don’t have to biopsy to make the diagnosis. You have to treat.
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So the treatment … I think we have all realized what the definition of nephrotic syndrome with proteinuria and the hypoalbuminemia, edema and hypercholesterolemia and the causes; most commonly, minimal change. There is a minimal change that now is not completely minimal. I mean, it is still minimal but not no findings at all, but there is on immunofluorescence something that’s IgM deposits. We are not sure whether it is an entity in itself. It’s still called minimal change with IgM deposits, but it seems like these patients don’t respond as well as pure minimal change. The other causes are much less common; focal segmental glomerular sclerosis, MPGN, membranous and congenital nephrotic syndrome, which is a whole different story of no response to immune suppressive medications. Nephrotic syndrome within the first year of life. Anybody below one-year-of-age or above whatever age you want to choose, 12, 10, 13, is not necessarily minimal change and needs a biopsy. But between one and whatever is the age for minimal change and you do the treatment first. Nephrotic syndrome can also accompany other multi-system diseases. We’ve already mentioned all of them; systemic lupus erythematosus, HSB, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, all these can present with nephrotic syndrome as well as the disease.
Comments (0) Posted by Canadian Pharmacy on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
Filed under Nephrotic Syndrome
Nephrotic syndrome presents with protein in the urine. The most common story would be somebody between one and 12. So a three-year-old would be the peak age. Mom wakes up, sees the baby wake up at six in the morning with swollen shut eyes. It’s a panic call that you get, but until you see the kid on examination, around noon, the boys is found to have no periorbital edema but has 3+ pitting edema of the legs and impressive scrotal edema and ascites. So that’s, as I mentioned, dependent edema; gone down. He had had small amounts of diarrhea the previous day, but mom doesn’t know if he has had his usual amount of urine as well, because she didn’t know to look for that. And it’s also diarrhea and pee-pee at the same time so it’s hard to tell. So that’s the story, and then you see them and the blood pressure is, if anything, on the low side or normal and the heart rate is a bit on the high side. Liver is palpable and there are decreased breath sounds bilaterally, and dullness on percussion. Normal or low blood pressure is because the basic status of this patient’s volume is hypovolemic intravascularly, because it’s low oncotic pressure, the fluids are outside in the interstitium and the intravascular volume is depleted. So usually, nephrotics are hypotensive or normotensive. Very rarely are they hypertensive from some other cause. And the heart rate is high because it’s like a dehydrated patient. Liver is already palpable; yes or no depends on how long it’s been going on, and the decreased breath sounds are of pleural effusions that this kid can have.
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Next, on lab exam, urine shows 4+ protein. There is no blood. Then he gets blood tests and the serum albumin is 1.6. I don’t want to scare you with 0.8 or 0.6, but that you can also find. Low albumin levels, cholesterol can be as high as 500, 600. Those are the cholesterols we see with nephrotics. And the sodium is low, 127. The sodium either because it’s really low or it’s pseudohyponatremia more likely from the hyperlipidemia. So that’s not always the real sodium, but you get electrolytes because this kid with the low volume can already have some degree of renal failure. Most nephrotics don’t but they could, so they could have hyperkalemia, acidosis, and other cause things. Creatinine is actually lower than you usually see and that is because the proteinuria increases the excretion of creatinine. So the creatinine is low, lower than normal. On the x-ray, the chest x-ray, the heart is a drop-shape that is smaller because of the low intravascular volume and there are small bilateral pleural effusions.
He’s admitted to the hospital, not necessarily but in this case, to get IV albumin followed by generic lasix online once a day; 1 per kg of the albumin and 2 per kg of the Lasix and over the next three days the patient has a very good diuresis, pleural effusions and scrotal edema resolves and the mom is taught how to dipstick the urine and he is discharged home. After a week she comes or calls and the edema in the legs, abdomen, everything has disappeared. The urine dipstick was still 4+ at home. It’s gone down to 3+, 2+ and after another week is negative.
Comments (1) Posted by Canadian Pharmacy on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009
Filed under Exanthems
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Next are neurologic manifestations and about 70,000 people are hospitalized each year in the United States with enterovirus, aseptic meningitis. So the leading cause of aseptic meningitis is enteroviruses.About 7,000 cases of encephalitis occur with enteroviruses each year. There are occasional cases of poliomyelitis-like illness and paralysis due to other enteroviruses in addition to polios 1, 2 and 3. Guillain-Barre syndrome, cerebellar ataxia, and occasionally neurologic sequelae. Some of these children will have CAT-scans looking like they have had strokes. Other manifestations; acute hemorrhagic conjunctivitis. First of all, conjunctivitis is a mild manifestation of many different enteroviruses. But a specific disease, acute hemorrhagic conjunctivitis with big-time conjunctivitis lasting for over a week occurs in outbreaks. Most of these original outbreaks were in tropical or semi-tropical countries and island communities, but they have been seen in areas more recently in the United States. These outbreaks have been due to coxsackie A-24 and most of the time to enterovirus 70. These are particularly severe, and also associated with this are a fair number of cases of neurologic disease of Guillain-Barre or a transverse myelitis-type illness. Pericarditis and myocarditis are due predominantly to coxsackie B viruses and there are changes. There are cycles of these, of new viruses in the population. Back in the 1950’s myocarditis in newborns was fairly common. This was acute, fulminant, myocarditis with considerable damage. But if they recovered, they recovered totally. In the present era with heart transplants and the diagnosis of cardiomyopathy there is a bit of confusion relating to myocarditis. There are studies, animal studies, which produced a more chronic cardiomyopathy-type picture. But these are different from what you see in children. The reason I bring this up is that there were attempts to treat the patients with this with steroids and anti-thymocyte globulin and things like that. But children should not be treated with that. They probably should get IVIG and they should get the antiviral proconerol on a compassionate plea basis.
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Orchitis; probably the leading cause of orchitis today are the enteroviruses, particularly coxsackie B. Other urinary tract findings; asymptomatic pyuria. You can get this with polio vaccine. So white cells in the urine, transitory, could be due to enterovirus infection. Myositis in mice; the coxsackie A viruses give myositis but this is extremely uncommon with children.
The last thing; enterovirus sepsis-like illness. Babies with a typical picture of bacterial sepsis, fever, poor feeding – or actually fever or hypothermia – distended abdomen, irritability, rash, lethargy, markedly elevated white count and the important thing is they have hepatitis, DIC and frequently a very bad outlook.
Comments (4) Posted by Canadian Pharmacy on Monday, November 30th, 2009
Filed under Exanthems
And lastly is pleurodynia. This is an interesting disease historically and also interesting because the diagnosis doesn’t get made. It has names such as Bornholm disease because of the island where it was seen, and devils grip because it gives acute chest pain, excruciating chest pain, which lasts for a few minutes and then goes away and then comes back again. Many cases of adults who are thought to have heart attacks in actual fact have pleurodynia. In children they are less likely to have chest pain or the chest pain can’t be differentiated from abdominal pain and it appears like an acute abdomen. This can come and go and really confuse people and surgeons, and certainly cardiologists.
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The next is gastrointestinal disease and since these are enteroviruses, when you discuss gastroenteritis somebody always says enterovirus. Yet a little bit of loose stool or nausea and vomiting is common. But as a cause of diarrhea without other manifestations, enteroviruses are actually quite rare. They have been statistically related with some outbreaks but by and large compared to Rotavirus for example, or Norwalk virus, are not a major cause of either diarrhea disease or nausea and vomiting. It’s funny that you have diarrhea and constipation here but after a day or two, roughly 30% of children with EcHO-9 have constipation. More importantly is abdominal pain relating to pleurodynia but also situations that look like appendicitis but aren’t, but you can also have appendicitis just due to enterovirus infections. You can have peritonitis, mesenteric adenitis. Of causes of intussusception this has become popular because of the association with Rotavirus vaccine. But both enteroviruses in the summertime are probably the most common known cause of intussusception and adenoviruses at other times of the year.
Hepatitis, severe hepatitis in neonates otherwise is not common. Other findings, pancreatitis and there is a tie with juvenile-onset diabetes and coxsackie B infections including isolation of the virus from the pancreas in fatal cases.
Comments (0) Posted by Canadian Pharmacy on Thursday, November 26th, 2009