This case highlights that acute renal infarction secondary to newly discovered atrial fibrillation can present as acute abdominal pain, mimicking gastrointestinal conditions like diverticulitis.
Consider renal infarction in new AF with acute abdominal pain; this case leaves open the need for prospective validation.
We report an 85-year-old female with known history of recurrent diverticulitis presented with abdominal pain. It was believed that the patient again needed to be treated for another diverticulitis and was started on the routine treatment. The initial CT scan of abdomen showed renal infarcts bilaterally that were confirmed by a CT with and without intravenous contrast secondary to unknown cause. An ECG found accidentally that the patient was in atrial fibrillation, which was the attributed factor to the renal infarctions. Subsequently, the patient was started on the appropriate anticoagulation and discharged.
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Eltawansy et al. (2014) studied this question.
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