Gonococcemia associated with adult respiratory distress syndrome. Rev Infect Dis

We report a case of gonococcemia that was associated with adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). To our knowledge, thisis only the third reported case of ARDS associated with gonococce-mia. This is the first reported case of ARDS associated with gonococcemia that was documented by positive results of blood cultures and measurements of wedge pressure obtained by a catheter in the pulmonary artery. We also believe that this is the first reported patient who required me-chanical ventilation under positive end-expiratory pressure. This patient made a full recovery. Gonococcemia associated with ARDS continues to occur rarely in patients despite the preva-lence of disseminated gonococcal infection. The reason for the infrequent occurrence of ARDS with disseminated gonococcal infection remains uncertain. Adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is commonly associated with sepsis. To our knowledge, only two cases of ARDS that were associated with disseminated gonococcal in-fection (DGI) havebeen reported in the English-language liter-ature [1, 2]. This report describes a third case of ARDS that was associated with well-documented DGI