[Acute respiratory failure in tropical malaria during pregnancy. Successful treatment using extracorporeal CO2 elimination].

A 32-year-old woman in the 26th week of pregnancy became ill, 6 days after returning from a trip to Indonesia, with a fever up to 42 degrees C, haemolytic anaemia (haemoglobin 7.6 g/dl) and thrombocytopenia (7,000/microliters). She had not been on any malaria prophylaxis. Chloroquine, quinine and pyrimethamine, administered after macrogametocytes of Plasmodium falciparum had been found in the blood smear, eliminated the parasites from the peripheral blood, but respiratory failure and treatment-resistant pneumonia occurred, leading to the adult respiratory distress syndrome (Morel stage 4). Because of threatened intrauterine death (resulting from premature placental separation during artificial ventilation) the child was delivered by an emergency section. Despite extensive conventional therapeutic measures the mother's respiratory state progressively deteriorated so that extracorporeal membrane CO2 elimination was instituted on the 17th day. First signs of improvement in respiratory functions were noted after six days. The extracorporeal CO2 elimination was discontinued after twelve days, because artificial ventilation could now be adequately controlled. The woman was gradually weaned from the ventilator and discharged home without symptoms after a total of 11 weeks in hospital. Her child has not shown any neurological symptoms.