Monday, April 21, 2014

More Than Meets the Eye


You've been seeing a 50 year old patient with resistant hypertension for a while. He was diagnosed several years ago, and you've been slowly increasing his antihypertensives to include hydrochlorothiazide, lisinopril, and amlodipine. Nevertheless, his blood pressures are still consistently 180/100. He has no other significant past medical or surgical problems. He is currently asymptomatic, has no chest pain, shortness of breath, altered mental status, headaches, visual disturbances, edema, or other signs or symptoms.

Laboratory values demonstrate a normal hematocrit, sodium 147, potassium 3.0, chloride 100, bicarb 18, creatinine 1.1, and low plasma renin.

Challenge: What's the diagnosis?

Image is in the public domain.

2 comments:

RaH said...

SIADH!, syndrome of inappropriate ADH secretion

Craig said...

good thought - definitely possible, but low plasma renin isn't usually seen in SIADH
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More Than Meets the Eye

This is Conn’s syndrome or primary aldosteronism.

Sources: UpToDate; Wikipedia.