Open AccessPrimary presentation of COVID-19 solely with gastrointestinal symptoms: a problem for the containment of the disease
Author(s) -
Christoph G. Dietrich,
Dolores Hübner,
Gernot Marx,
Johannes Bickenbach,
Andreas Bootsveld
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
european journal of gastroenterology and hepatology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.881
H-Index - 102
eISSN - 1473-5687
pISSN - 0954-691X
DOI - 10.1097/meg.0000000000001922
Subject(s) - medicine , nausea , radiology , presentation (obstetrics) , pancreatitis , abdominal pain , disease , endoscopic ultrasound , covid-19 , infectious disease (medical specialty)
An oligosymptomatic patient with initially exclusively gastrointestinal symptoms (massive nausea and mild pancreatitis) turned out to suffer from COVID-19 during the hospital stay. The patient did not exhibit the typical COVID-symptoms cough or fever despite lung involvement. The gastroenterological diagnostic investigations comprised abdominal ultrasound, gastroscopy and endoscopic ultrasound and first revealed no clear cause of these symptoms. In an abdominal computed tomography (CT) scan, patchy ground-glass opacities in both lungs were discovered and the following chest CT scan and a virus PCR test revealed the right and surprising diagnosis. This case report depicts the clinical course of this atypical case and discusses gastrointestinal COVID-manifestations and clinical consequences as well as consequences of this atypical presentation for disease control.