Why the study?
Obesity is a common chronic disorder with detrimental long-term consequences if left untreated, prompting the presentation of a patient with morbid obesity and its associated complications alongside a literature review.
Extreme obesity can lead to severe cardiopulmonary complications, including massive cardiomegaly and fatal pulmonary thromboembolism, even in the absence of atherosclerosis.
Leptin resistance in morbid obesity merits clinical vigilance; leaves open targeted genetic therapies pending further study.
Obesity is a common chronic disorder and has detrimental long-term consequences if left untreated. Herein, we report a case of a young lady who suffered from morbid obesity and many of its consequences, and we present a literature review of these complications. While the cause of obesity is multifactorial, the genetic component is particularly important in the pathophysiology of marked obesity. Resistance to Leptin is considered one of the main causes of obesity. There is a unique relationship between polycystic ovary syndrome and obesity, as observed in our case. Obesity is associated with cardiovascular and lung diseases such as heart failure, thromboembolic disease, sleep apnea, and pulmonary hypertension. Our patient had cardiomegaly (730 gm) with eccentric hypertrophy of left and right ventricles. The coronary arteries and aorta were free of atherosclerosis, which is a surprising finding that relates to the mysterious phenomenon of obesity paradox. The terminal event in our young woman was multiple segmental and subsegmental pulmonary arterial thrombi/thromboemboli superimposed on chronic cardiopulmonary stress due to massive obesity.
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Ali et al. (2022) studied this question.
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