Case report reveals acute aortic dissection diagnosis in a vulnerable patient, highlighting challenges in emergency medicine diagnosis.
Algorithms and tools are frequently utilized in emergency medicine workflows. Focusing on selective information, they are at risk of missing patients with atypical presentations of sometimes life‐threatening conditions. This case report highlights a female patient in her late 70s who was transferred to the emergency department due to vomiting and diarrhea after eating raw fish for lunch. While she was initially stable and symptom‐free, her dynamic course in the emergency department ultimately led to the diagnosis of an acute aortic dissection. After performing an emergency aortic arch replacement, the patient's postoperative stay and one‐year follow‐up were unremarkable. Concluding, this case report elaborates on the implications of respecting atypical presentations in vulnerable patients.
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Wehking et al. (2025) studied this question.