Introduction:

Multiple myeloma constitutes a malignant proliferation of plasma cells derived from a single clone. The tumor, its products, and the patient's response cause various organic functional disorders and symptoms such as bone pain or fractures, kidney failure, predisposition to infections, anemia, hypercalcemia, and sometimes coagulation disorders, neurological symptoms, and vascular manifestations of hyperviscosity.

Objective:

To present a rare case, taking into account that acute infection as the initial presentation of myeloma is unusual.

Case report:

We report a case of a 61-year-old patient, admitted to the orthopedic service on three different occasions and operated on for septic arthritis of the left knee, in every occasions. The local inflammatory elements at the joint level, recurrent fever, anemia and accelerated erythrocyte sedimentation were still present.

Conclusions:

Specific hematological studies confirmed the diagnosis of multiple myeloma. Induction-to-remission treatment for this disease was started with melphalan and prednisone; improvement of the infection was achieved at the conclusion of the first cycle of this therapeutic intervention.

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