A tragic case: Waterhouse-Friderichsen syndrome

Not even 24 h after the first symptoms appeared a previously completely healthy teenager died despite exhaustive efforts in intensive care. Even in the prehospital phase the patient was hemodynamically limited. The emergency physician recognized the threatening situation early and brought the young patient into hospital with maximum medical care. The present casuistic should not be taken as a perfect example, but rather as a basis for discussing whether an optimization of prehospital management would have been possible. © 2009 Springer Medizin Verlag.