Radiology Case Reports (Aug 2021)

Pneumocephalus resulting from chest infection complicated by pleural-subarachnoid fistula

  • Noura Alnajdi, MBBS,
  • Abdullah Darwish, MBBS,
  • Amjad Alharbi, MBBS,
  • Mutaz Khairo, MBBS,
  • Zaina Brinji, MBBS,
  • Elham Rawah, MBBS

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 16, no. 8
pp. 2012 – 2016

Abstract

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Pleural-subarachnoid fistula is a rare type of Cerebrospinal fluid fistula with less than 60 cases reported in the literature. Here we present a case of 55-year-old female patient, known case of acute myeloid leukemia on chemotherapy, who developed pleural-subarachnoid fistula due to invasive atypical apical lung fungal infection. All of the reported cases in the literature were secondary to trauma or post-surgery. To our knowledge, this is the first reported case of pleural-subarachnoid fistula developed as sequela of fungal infection.