Although patients with Plasmodium vivax malaria usually recover from the disease without any sequelae, several complications do occasionally occur and these may need urgent invasive procedures, including surgery, and/or lead to fatal blood loss (Jacobs et al, 2005; Gockel et al., 2006; Maguire and Baird, 2010). Worryingly, the incidence of complications in P. vivax malaria, such as acute respiratory-distress syndrome or splenic rupture, appears to be increasing (Kasliwal et al., 2009). A case of P. vivax malaria complicated by spontaneous haemothorax (perhaps the first ever reported) is described below.
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