A 65 year old man with known congestive heart failure presents with pulmonary infiltrates, respiratory failure, and a low serum sodium of 117. Is it primarily congestive heart failure or is it pneumonia with the low sodium related to SIADH? Surprisingly, it turned out to be the latter. This is a situation where a Swan-Ganz catheter was extremely useful.
2 comments:
happens in my practice all the time. Usually the cardiologist doesn't know any other diagnosis code for someone who's short of breath
As a cardiologist, I resent that!
But I agree, I would have swan'd him.
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