A rare case of Wernicke encephalopathy in stage IV gastric cancer

ABSTRACT

A 38-year-old male with stage IV gastric adenocarcinoma presented with abdominal pain, nausea, bilious non-bloody vomiting, and lethargy. He was found to have an ileus and was treated appropriately with bowel rest and nasogastric tube decompression. However, the patient was also noted to have confusion and nystagmus. While he was abstinent from alcohol for 20 years, he was found to have Wernicke Encephalopathy (WE) as a result of malnutrition from the underlying malignancy.

KEYWORDS:

• Wernicke encephalopathy
• metabolic encephalopathy
• confusion
• malignancy
• malnutrition

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study. https://authorservices.taylorandfrancis.com/data-sharing/share-your-data/data-availability-statements/

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from the patient for this case report.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported that there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.