Rising Threat of Infections Unfazed by Antibiotics
By Linda on Mar 8, 2010 in Infections | comments(0)
Excerpt:
A minor-league pitcher in his younger days, Richard Armbruster kept playing baseball recreationally into his 70s, until his right hip started bothering him. Last February he went to a St. Louis hospital for what was to be a routine hip replacement.
By late March, Mr. Armbruster, then 78, was dead. After a series of postsurgical complications, the final blow was a bloodstream infection that sent him into shock and resisted treatment with antibiotics.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I think my dad would walk in for a hip replacement and be dead two months later,” said Amy Fix, one of his daughters.
Not until the day Mr. Armbruster died did a laboratory culture identify the organism that had infected him: Acinetobacter baumannii.
Full article: http://finance.yahoo.com/insurance/article/108931/rising-threat-of-infections-unfazed-by-antibiotics?mod=insurance-health
