Acute Starvation as a Trigger for Non-Diabetic Ketoacidosis in a Third-Trimester Pregnant Woman Undergoing Severe SARS-CoV-2 Pneumonia

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Author Info

L. R. Villalobos Lopez O. R. Jimenez Flores Luis Del Carpio-Orantes M. Martinez Rojas A. A. Basulto Herrera

Corresponding Author

Luis Del Carpio-Orantes
Intensive Care Unit, General Hospital No. 71 Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social, Veracruz, Mexico

A B S T R A C T

Acute starvation was found as the single probable triggering cause for this condition, since most-common causes of high-anion gap metabolic acidosis were dismissed. We report the case of a 34-year-old woman undergoing a 25-weeks pregnancy and suffering COVID-19 severe pneumonia who developed severe and persistent metabolic acidemia caused by non-diabetic ketoacidosis in whom we found a background of 48-hours starvation prior to ICU admission. The patient underwent 13-days mechanical ventilation and comprehensive care as well as an addressed treatment for this complication. Further the metabolic acidosis got solved and lately we were able to discharge her from the ICU and, ultimately, from hospital to home with the only need of supplementary oxygen. Ketosis is common in prolonged fasting, but it rarely impacts pH in an acute patient. In conditions of increased metabolic demand, such as pregnancy and pneumonia, starving could increase metabolic stress and finally alter the acid-base status affecting the clinical situation for the patient.

Article Info

Article Type

Case Report

Publication history

Received: Thu 27, Jan 2022
Accepted: Tue 22, Feb 2022
Published: Thu 03, Mar 2022

Copyright

© 2023 Luis Del Carpio-Orantes. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Hosting by Science Repository.
DOI: 10.31487/j.JCMCR.2022.01.01