Case Report
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2018. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Dec 6, 2018; 6(15): 1007-1011
Published online Dec 6, 2018. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v6.i15.1007
Gangrenous cholecystitis: A silent but potential fatal disease in patients with diabetic neuropathy. A case report
Melorin Mehrzad, Charles C Jehle, Lauren O Roussel, Raman Mehrzad
Melorin Mehrzad, Charles C Jehle, Lauren O Roussel, Raman Mehrzad, Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Rhode Island Hospital, Brown University, Providence, RI 02903, United States
Author contributions: All authors contributed equally to the manuscript.
Informed consent statement: A signed consent was obtained and saved for this case report by the patient through the standard institutional consent document and saved by the institution. Most importantly, there are no patient identifiers on the case or the images. In American institutions, medical record from a patient is not allowed to print out and give to anyone else. This is according to the law of HIPPA. Again, there is no patient identifier on the entire case so this patient is completely anonymous.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Nothing to disclose.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Raman Mehrzad, MD, Academic Fellow, Staff Physician, MD, MHL, Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Rhode Island Hospital, Brown University, 235 Plain St., Providence, RI 02903, United States. raman_m1@hotmail.com
Telephone: +1-774-2400060
Received: September 19, 2018
Peer-review started: September 19, 2018
First decision: October 4, 2018
Revised: November 8, 2018
Accepted: November 14, 2018
Article in press: November 15, 2018
Published online: December 6, 2018
Processing time: 78 Days and 20.9 Hours
Abstract

Gangrenous cholecystitis (GC) is a severe and potentially deadly complication of acute cholecystitis. We present a 83-year-old gentleman with a past medical history of type 2 diabetes mellitus with significant associated neuropathy, presenting to a community hospital in a major metropolitan area with 10 days nausea and vomiting and a benign abdominal exam. While the patient was admitted for hyperglycemia, he was subsequently found to have severe GC requiring urgent surgical intervention.

Keywords: Gangrenous cholecystitis; Diabetes mellitus; Hyperglycemia; Complications; Case report

Core tip: We present an 83-year-old gentleman with type 2 diabetes mellitus and associated neuropathy who was found to have severe gangrenous cholecystitis (GC) requiring urgent surgical intervention but without any of the cardinal symptoms of GC.