Morel-Lavallée lesion associated with atypical skin damage: a case report

Abstract

A Morel-Lavallée lesion is a post-traumatic, soft tissue lesion that is little known and for which there is no standard treatment. This report describes the case of a 51-year-old man who presented with a large Morel-Lavallée lesion on the left calf that was not diagnosed on two visits to the emergency department. Given the deteriorating condition of the skin, we performed surgical drainage of the effusion because the skin was showing signs of major damage. Complications occurred following surgery, with cellulitis in the lower limb caused by Citrobacter Koseri, a gram-negative bacillus that is rarely implicated in soft tissue infections, and wound dehiscence. The purpose of our article is to present the difficulty involved in choosing the right treatment from among the many proposed in the literature, and to inform any practitioner working in an emergency setting about the existence of this often overlooked condition.