ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Med.
Sec. Pulmonary Medicine
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1696005
A Case Report of Leptospirosis Complicated by Severe Pulmonary Hemorrhage Treated with Venovenous Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation
Provisionally accepted
- People's Hospital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Nanning, China
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Leptospirosis is a zoonotic disease with diverse clinical manifestations, and its severe form can lead to life-threatening complications such as pulmonary hemorrhage. We present a novel case of a 57-year-old female with leptospirosis who developed severe pulmonary hemorrhage and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and was successfully managed with early venovenous extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (VV-ECMO), minimal anticoagulation, and lymphoplasmacyte exchange (LPE). This case highlights the importance of early ECMO initiation, individualized anticoagulation, and immunomodulatory therapy in improving outcomes for patients with leptospiral pulmonary hemorrhage syndrome (LPHS), a condition with mortality exceeding 50%. To our knowledge, this is the first reported case combining VV-ECMO with LPE in LPHS, offering a new therapeutic paradigm for critically ill patients at the intersection of infection and autoimmunity.
Keywords: Leptospirosis, pulmonary hemorrhage, Venovenous Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (VV-ECMO), Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), Lymphoplasmacyte Exchange (LPE)
Received: 31 Aug 2025; Accepted: 16 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 YANG, TANG and zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
LI WEN YANG, yliwen2025@163.com
XIAO GANG TANG, 6661660boy@163.com
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