Complication of warfarin therapy presenting as empyema

A number of risk indices have been formulated in an attempt to predict risk of a major hemorrhage in an individual on warfarin therapy. No single index to date is able to reliably predict this risk in an individual patient. Although most warfarin related hemorrhages are gastrointestinal or intracranial in origin this case represents a particularly rare entity of a major hemorrhage presenting as an encysted empyema. To the best of our knowledge this has never before been described.