Case Report: Wernicke's encephalopathy after gastric surgery presenting as lactic acidosis and refractory thrombocytopenia

ABSTRACT: Wernicke's encephalopathy (WE) is a severe neuropsychiatric disorder, mainly resulting from a nutritional deficiency of thiamine. WE is hard to detect at an early stage. Less than 20% of WE can be diagnosed during a patient’s lifetime, and WE tends to occur in patients with chronic alcoholism. Therefore, a large proportion of non-alcoholic WE patients are misdiagnosed. Lactate is an important by-product of anaerobic metabolism when the aerobic metabolism is blocked without thiamine, which can potentially serve as an alerting index for WE. Here, we report a case of a patient with WE who suffered gastric outlet obstruction following postoperative fasting, accompanied by lactic acidosis and refractory thrombocytopenia. A 67-year-old non-alcoholic woman who suffered hyperemesis for 2 months wa

SUBMITTER: Lin Q 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9989168 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature