| C A S E REP ORTA 32-year-old woman with past medical history of difficult-to-control arterial hypertension, presented to the emergency department with a 1-month history of abdominal pain and nausea mostly related to food intake. Moreover, she also had noticed during the previous months weakness and claudication of the left upper extremity and central chest pain associated with moderate efforts. She denied dyspnea or heart failure symptoms, arthritis, fever, loss of vision, headache or constitutional syndrome. Physical examination revealed a blood pressure (BP) of 183/59 mm Hg in the right arm and of 84/62 mmHg in the left arm, where a very weak radial pulse compared with the right arm could be noticed; moreover, a grade IV/VI systolic heart murmur with fremitus and irradiation to the carotid area and an abdominal bruit irradiated to renal arteries were detected. Pulse wave amplitude was symmetrically weak in both lower extremities. The main laboratory findings showed mild normocytic anemia (Hb 9.9 mg/dL) and severe renal impairment (creatinine 2.32 mg/dL, glomerular filtrate 34 mL/min) with C-reactive protein and high-sensitive Troponin I within normal ranges. Autoimmunity tests, including antinuclear and antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies, were negative. Thorax X-ray only showed cardiomegaly whereas signs of left ventricular (LV) hypertrophy and repolarization abnormalities were observed in the electrocardiogram Figure 1A).Exercise stress test revealed marked subendocardial ischemia at moderate efforts. Transthoracic echocardiogram and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging confirmed the presence of moderate to severe concentric LV hypertrophy with a maximum wall thickness of 19 mm at the anteroseptal region,the LV ejection fraction was preserved Figure 1B).
| WHAT IS THE D IAG NOS IS?Doppler ultrasound of the kidneys revealed parietal thickening of the suprarenal aorta, (velocity greater than 500 cm/s), and both renal arteries, observing a severely impaired flow (flow parvus tardus and intrarenal resistive index of 0.3) in the left renal artery (LRA) and velocities greater than 400 cm/s in the right renal artery (RRA) due to significant stenosis (intrarenal resistive index of 0.4; Figure 2. Thoraco-abdominal angio-computed tomography (CT) showed severe wall thickening of the thoracic aorta, brachiocephalic trunk, both common carotid arteries and the proximal portion of both subclavian arteries, with complete occlusion of the left subclavian artery but recanalization by collaterals at its distal portion. Significant stenoses were observed in the abdominal aorta, superior mesenteric artery (SMA) and RRA, whereas the celiac trunk and LRA were completely occluded. However, intra-abdominal organ perfusion was preserved through collaterals dependent on the inferior mesenteric artery (IMA) Figure 3. Therefore, after these radiological findings, the diagnosis of Takayasu arteritis (TA) was made and positron emission tomography-CT (PET-CT) was performed to assess inflammatory activity, observing no hypermetabolic foci ...