A clinical case of an atypical clinical pattern of renal colic in a nonverbal patient

Abstract

Renal colic is a condition caused by the passage of a concretion from the kidney through the ureter into the bladder, which is accompanied by a pronounced pain syndrome. Patients with renal colic often seek emergency help with complaints of severe pain, nausea, dysuria. However, there is a category of people who, for various reasons, cannot verbally express their feelings. Such patients are called nonverbal. Nonverbal patients are people with severe cognitive impairments or those who are temporarily unable to speak due to surgery or illness, but they can still demonstrate pain using nonverbal signals.In this article, we present an observation of an atypical clinical picture of renal colic in a nonverbal elderly patient. In the observed woman, an acute attack of renal colic lasted 5 days and passed first under the «mask» of acute pancreatitis. Without receiving pathogenetic therapy, the patient developed acute obstructive pyelonephritis, septic shock, which was initially mistaken for an acute violation of cerebral circulation. The performed computed tomography (CT) helped to identify a concretion in the upper third of the ureter on the left, a violation of the outflow of urine from the left kidney. The patient urgently had a stent installed in the pelvis of the left kidney, urine outflow was restored, anti-inflammatory, detoxification, litolytic therapy was prescribed. After that, the patient's condition improved significantly, and after 3 months, a decrease in the size and fragmentation of the concretion was observed during the control CT scan.Conclusion. Nonverbal patients are a special group of patients whose clinical picture may be blurred or atypical. Assessment of pain symptoms in nonverbal patients is difficult, which can lead to an incorrect diagnosis and lengthen the period of diagnosis of the disease. The timely diagnosis of renal colic in nonverbal patients is also affected by the localization of pain, since its irradiating nature can direct the diagnostic search «on the wrong track».