A Case Report of Anesthesia-induced Diffuse Alveolar Hemorrhage Presenting to the Emergency Department

The inhaled anesthetic sevoflurane is an uncommon etiology of diffuse alveolar hemorrhage (DAH). As DAH typically presents in the inpatient, postoperative setting, it has been infrequently reported in the anesthesiology literature and, to our knowledge, has not been reported in the emergency medicine literature to date.

We describe the presentation of a young, healthy male in respiratory distress to a busy urban emergency department (ED) after an outpatient surgical procedure. We highlight the etiology of post-anesthesia DAH and the acute management of this rare diagnosis in the ED.

With outpatient surgical centers becoming an increasingly popular option for lower risk procedures, emergency physicians would benefit from understanding this presentation and its pathophysiology.