Background: Acute mesenteric ischemia is an abrupt cutoff of the blood supply to a portion of the small intestine, leading to ischemia, cellular damage, intestinal necrosis, and patient death, if left untreated. Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory, painful, defacing, and non-infectious skin disease, determined as sharply demarcated erythematous plaques with a whitish scale that is considered to be an autoimmune inflammatory disease with an unreadable underlying mechanism.
Case presentation: A 40-year-old male patient who was a known case of psoriasis for the last 18 years, and was not on medication, was presented to the emergency department (ED) complaining of nonspecific abdominal pain for 3 days. Chest X-ray was unremarkable, plain CT without contrast was done in ED but not significant for pneumoperitoneum or intra-abdominal injury. The decision was made to shift the patient directly for laparoscopic exploration that revealed discolored bowel indicating ischemia.
Conclusion: There is a relation between venous thromboembolism and psoriasis with unknown mechanism. Primary care providers should keep that in mind and monitor the patient with other risk factors for venous thromboembolism to avoid delay in diagnosis, which might result in poor prognosis.
Key words: Mesenteric ischemia, venous embolism, psoriasis, deep venous thrombosis
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