A Rare Case of Empyema Complicated With Bronchopleural Fistula Secondary to Mucormycosis in a Young Immunocompromised Diabetic Patient With COVID-19

Ruby Risal; Tahmina Jahir; Ratul Islam; Pharlin Noel; Kamal R Subedi; Ahmad Khan; Aneeta Kumari; Marie Schmidt

doi:10.7759/cureus.26635

A Rare Case of Empyema Complicated With Bronchopleural Fistula Secondary to Mucormycosis in a Young Immunocompromised Diabetic Patient With COVID-19

Cureus. 2022 Jul 7;14(7):e26635. doi: 10.7759/cureus.26635. eCollection 2022 Jul.

Authors

Ruby Risal¹, Tahmina Jahir¹, Ratul Islam², Pharlin Noel³, Kamal R Subedi⁴, Ahmad Khan¹, Aneeta Kumari⁵, Marie Schmidt¹

Affiliations

¹ Pulmonary Medicine, Interfaith Medical Center, Brooklyn, USA.
² Medicine, American University of Antigua, New York, USA.
³ Surgery, Mount Sinai South Nassau Hospital, Oceanside, USA.
⁴ Department of Medicine, Interfaith Medical Center, Brooklyn, USA.
⁵ Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Interfaith Medical Center, Brooklyn, USA.

Abstract

Mucormycosis is an opportunistic fungal infection caused by the zygomycetes Mucor and Rhizopus. Most documented conditions and risk factors that predispose to mucormycosis are uncontrolled diabetes mellitus (DM), with or without ketoacidosis, hematological malignancies (HM), transplantation, immunosuppression, and chronic sinusitis. Pulmonary empyema secondary to Mucor in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-infected patients is rarely documented. Here we present an extremely rare case of pulmonary empyema secondary to Mucor infection complicated by bronchocutaneous fistula in a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patient in the setting of acute COVID-19 infection.

Keywords: covid 19; diabetic ketoacidosis (dka); empyema necessitans; “diabetes mellitus”; “mucormycosis”.

Publication types

Case Reports