Case Report Influenza Induced Cardiomyopathy: An Unusual Cause of Hypoxemia

Copyright © 2015 Abdullah Quddus et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Influenza has considerable burden on public health funds. The complications of influenza can be devastating. We present a case of a 42-year-old woman with history of asthma who presented to the emergency room in winter with shortness of breath and general malaise and was found to be in hypoxemic respiratory failure. She was diagnosed with influenza and workup revealed severely depressed systolic cardiac function (ejection fraction of 25%). She was treated with oseltamivir and diuresis and regained cardiac function within a week. We review the pathophysiology and management of influenza induced cardiomyopathy. 1