Re: MRSA after a c/section-scary
From: Meenan, Anna (annam@uic.edu)
Sun Oct 28 10:31:16 2007
Article says the gynecologist learned it was MRSA BEFORE the three
months of packing and wound care. Why would you doubt it was MRSA to
start with? If a boil on a healthy 12-year-old kid can be MRSA, why
not a swelling in a post-op wound?
Anna Meenan, MD
>Probably wasn't MRSA to start with. Only after it wasn't drained
>adequately and was treated with multiple antibiotics over 3 months
>did it turn into MRSA.
>
>Dan
>
>On 10/28/07, <mailto:GIN11153@aol.com>GIN11153@aol.com
><<mailto:GIN11153@aol.com>GIN11153@aol.com> wrote:
>
><http://tinyurl.com/2ncx6u>http://tinyurl.com/2ncx6u
>
>IN FOCUS
>October 18, 2007
>Hospitals and Superbugs: Go in Sick... Get Sicker "All seemed fine,
>except "my temperature never went back to normal after surgery,"
>Gehrke says. During her first few days at home, she had a low-grade
>fever that hovered around 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees
>Celsius) and she noticed a lump had formed below her incision. By
>the fourth day, the lump had ballooned to the size of a lime, her
>fever had jumped to 103 degrees F and her incision was intensely
>painful. "It was like someone had taken a burning match and stuck it
>inside" the cut skin, Gehrke says. She immediately went to see her
>doctor, who took out the staples (as is customary a few days after a
>C-section) and examined the growing bulge under the wound. He
>dismissed the pain as normal..." ...
>MRSA causes some 94,000 invasive infections in the U.S. each year,
>resulting in almost 19,000 deaths-more than those caused by human
>immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-said a study published this week in
>JAMA The Journal of the American Medical Association. And "the
>majority of these cases appeared to be health care-acquired," says
>Elizabeth Bancroft, a medical epidemiologist with the Los Angeles
>County Department of Public Health and author of an editorial that
>accompanied the study.
>Learning the infection was MRSA, Gehrke's gynecologist immediately
>switched her to a stronger antibiotic and put her on bed rest;
>nurses from the Visiting Nurses Association came to her house daily
>to pack the wound in gauze and check her vital signs. But the
>swelling remained and the wound continued to ooze pus.
>After three months of this, the wound still had not healed. At the
>advice of her ob/gyn's partner (who was filling in for her doctor
>that day), Gehrke went to see doctors at Indian River Hospital's
>wound care facility. They told her she needed a second operation to
>remove the tissue destroyed by the infection. Surgeons reopened her
>incision and discovered a festering infection that had caused
>extensive damage. It was "like looking at a hole in your belly [that
>is] seven inches wide and six-and-a-half inches deep," she recalled
>in an interview with ScientificAmerican.com. After the operation,
>Gehrke stopped seeing her ob/gyn, but continued to be treated by the
>wound care physicians and visiting nurses. She says she was mostly
>bedridden for another three months because it was painful to move
>while attached to a wound V.A.C., a suction device that aids healing
>by vacuuming pus, blood and other fluids.
>
>Gehrke survived but it took seven months when all was said and done
>for the infection to clear up and the wound to heal. She says she
>was bedridden for a total of six months and racked up $13,000 in
>out-of-pocket expenses for home care and procedures associated with
>her infection.
>
>AOL.com and
>Your Homepage.
>
>--
>R. Daniel Braun, MD FACOG(L) CMT
>Professor Emeritus
>Dept. of Obstetrics and Gynecology
>Indiana U. School of Medicine
>
>R. Daniel Braun
>
> "Science without Religion is LAME; Religion without Science is BLIND"
> Einstein 1941
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