A 43-year-old Hispanic woman presented to the clinic complaining of fever, chills and cough for 14 days. The patient reported a recent trip to Asia 12 days prior to presenting symptoms. Given her physical examination findings, she was treated empirically for community acquired pneumonia. Since her symptoms worsened despite the antibiotic, she was referred to the Emergency Department for further evaluation. The patient was ultimately diagnosed with pneumonia and malaria. When evaluating patients with history of recent travel, it is important to consider communicable diseases that are endemic to the areas visited, as well as multiple disease aetiologies for complicated and refractory cases.
Keywords: general practice / family medicine; pneumonia (infectious disease); travel medicine; tropical medicine (infectious disease).
© BMJ Publishing Group Ltd (unless otherwise stated in the text of the article) 2017. All rights reserved. No commercial use is permitted unless otherwise expressly granted.