A Case of Relapsing Polychondritis with Multisystemic Involvement

Relapsing polychondritis is a rare immunologic disorder that can involve all cartilage and proteoglycan-rich tissues. Clinical symptoms of relapsing polychondritis are often associated with recurrent inflammatory manifestations and functional impairment of such tissues. The disease has an insidious onset, and the first symptoms and clinical manifestations vary, making it easy to misdiagnose and miss the diagnosis. Here, we report a case of relapsing polychondritis with multi-systemic disease in a single ear and a single eye. A 44-year-old Chinese man suddenly developed redness, swelling, and pain in the right auricle without any causative factors half a year ago, followed by other multi-systemic symptoms, and he went to an outside hospital several times. He was diagnosed with sinusitis and bronchitis after completing some investigations in a foreign hospital, and his condition did not improve after taking oral medication, so he came to our hospital and was diagnosed with relapsing polychondritis after completing some investigations.