Cases That Test Your Skills

Malignant catatonia and aphasia follow multiple-drug overdose

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Two weeks after an overdose, Ms. M, age 37, develops malignant catatonia. Although her catatonic symptoms resolve with ECT, she shows word-finding difficulty. How would you proceed?


 

References

CASE Improvement, then decline
Ms. M, age 37, is brought to the hospi­tal after her husband found her at home, after an unknown duration of impaired consciousness. Her husband reports that Ms. M had normal cognitive functioning before this event, with no difficulty complet­ing activities of daily living. Ms. M’s medi­cal and psychiatric histories are notable for type 2 diabetes mellitus, unspecified bipolar disorder, and opioid, cocaine, and alcohol use disorders. Her medications include parox­etine, 40 mg/d, and gabapentin, 1,200 mg/d.

First admission. Poor inspiratory effort and oxygen saturation of 70% leads to emergent intubation. Serum laboratory studies reveal a white blood cell (WBC) count at 10,900/μL and creatinine phos­phokinase level of 25,000 U/L. Urine drug screen is positive for tetrahydrocannabinol, cocaine, and opioids.

Ms. M is admitted to the ICU for manage­ment of rhabdomyolysis and multi-organ system failure, including acute hypoxic kid­ney injury.

By hospital Day 7, the tube is extubated with no recorded physical neurologic defi­cits. Mental status exam is normal, except for impaired memory of events surrounding the admission. Ms. M is discharged home with a recommendation for outpatient follow-up.

2 Weeks later. Ms. M is brought to the emergency department after a progressive decrease in social interaction, limited oral intake, decline in activities of daily living, and urinary incontinence. Results from laboratory studies are within normal limits; brain MRI is negative; EEG shows generalized moderate slowing.

During psychiatric evaluation, Ms. M is mute and staring continuously. Examination reveals oppositional paratonia (gegen­halten), catalepsy, prominent negativism, and waxy flexibility, all suggestive of cata­tonia. IV lorazepam is initiated at 1 mg every 8 hours, titrated to 2 mg, 3 times a day.

Ms. M is transferred to a psychiatric hospi­tal for further treatment of catatonia.

Second admission. Evaluation with the Bush-Francis Catatonia Rating Scale supported a diagnosis of catatonia, with the presence of >3 features from the 14-item screen and a score of 16 on the 23-item rating scale.1 After titrat­ing lorazepam to 9 mg/d with minimal thera­peutic impact, the psychiatry team consults the electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) service, who deems Ms. M to be an appropriate candidate and petitions for court-ordered ECT.

On hospital Day 8, Ms. M has a fever of 104°F, tachycardia at 180 beats per minute, increased rigidity, and a WBC count of 17,800/μL. She is transferred to the ICU, with a presumptive diagnosis of malignant catatonia.

The medical evaluation, including general laboratory studies, EEG, and spinal fluid anal­ysis, is unremarkable. Because of vital sign instability, 2 ECT treatments are completed in the general hospital before Ms. M resumes psychiatric inpatient care.

By the tenth ECT treatment, Ms. M is no longer febrile and experiences no further autonomic instability or psychomotor fea­tures of catatonia. Despite these improve­ments, she is noted to have persistent word-finding difficulty.


Which test would you order as the next step in your work up?

a) EEG
b) lumbar puncture
c) MRI
d) CT


The authors’ observations
In approximately 25% of cases, catatonia is caused by a general medical condition2; as such, a comprehensive medical workup is vital for assessment and management of catatonic patients. In Ms. M’s case, we con­sidered several medical causes, including nutritional deficiency, infection, a toxin, renal or hepatic impairment, hypothyroidism, sei­zure, and stroke. Evaluation included measurement of thyroid-stimulating hormone, vitamin B12, and folic acid levels; urinalysis and urine drug screen; chest radiography; lumbar puncture; neuroimaging; and EEG (Table 1).


Several conditions in the differen­tial diagnosis were noteworthy. Ms. M’s severe and sudden neurologic decline, along with a positive urine drug screen for substances of abuse, raised concern about overdose leading to toxic encephalopathy or hypoxic brain injury. Ms. M’s oxygen saturation when she was found was mod­erately hypoxic at 70%, which is not a level associated with hypoxic brain damage.

We also considered posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome (PRES), which presents variably with nausea, visual impairment, disturbance in conscious­ness, seizures, and focal neurologic signs.3 Although 67% to 80% of patients with PRES also have acute hypertension, blood pressure elevation is not necessary for the diagnosis.4 Similar to toxic leukoencepha­lopathy, PRES is diagnosed by brain MRI, with classic signs of posterior white-matter edema.

Case reports also describe an uncom­mon demyelinating syndrome, delayed post-hypoxic leukoencephalopathy (DPHL), which develops several weeks or months after a cerebral anoxic insult.5 In Ms. M’s case, brain MRI performed during her sec­ond medical hospitalization, 7 days after the initial neuropsychiatric decline, was unremarkable. Using this result to rule out DPHL would have been premature because pathognomonic abnormalities can appear as long as 40 days after the anoxic insult. Given our differential diagnosis, we ordered a repeat MRI.

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