When Medicine Makes Patients Sicker

[donnay]

When Medicine Makes Patients Sicker

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Despite the jackhammer-like rhythm of a mechanical ventilator, Alicia Moreno had dozed off in a chair by her 1-year-old’s hospital bed, when a doctor woke her with some bad news: The common stool softener her son, Anderson, was given months earlier had been contaminated with the bacterium Burkholderia cepacia.

Suddenly, Anderson’s rocky course made medical sense. B. cepacia was the same unusual bacterium mysteriously found in the boy’s respiratory tract, temporarily taking him off the list for a heart transplant. The same bacterium resurfaced after his transplant and combined with a flu-like illness to infect his lungs. He’s been on a ventilator ever since.

The tainted over-the-counter medicine, docusate sodium, routinely prescribed to nearly every hospitalized patient to avert constipation, caused Anderson to suffer “serious and dangerous life-threatening injuries,” a lawsuit filed by his family alleges. The drug was eventually recalled, but only after a Texas hospital staff noticed an uptick in B. cepacia infections, prompting a six-month investigation that led back to the tainted drug and its Florida manufacturing plant.

Continued reading...

[Zippyjuan]

When Medicine Makes Patients Sicker

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Despite the jackhammer-like rhythm of a mechanical ventilator, Alicia Moreno had dozed off in a chair by her 1-year-old’s hospital bed, when a doctor woke her with some bad news: The common stool softener her son, Anderson, was given months earlier had been contaminated with the bacterium Burkholderia cepacia.

Suddenly, Anderson’s rocky course made medical sense. B. cepacia was the same unusual bacterium mysteriously found in the boy’s respiratory tract, temporarily taking him off the list for a heart transplant. The same bacterium resurfaced after his transplant and combined with a flu-like illness to infect his lungs. He’s been on a ventilator ever since.

The tainted over-the-counter medicine, docusate sodium, routinely prescribed to nearly every hospitalized patient to avert constipation, caused Anderson to suffer “serious and dangerous life-threatening injuries,” a lawsuit filed by his family alleges. The drug was eventually recalled, but only after a Texas hospital staff noticed an uptick in B. cepacia infections, prompting a six-month investigation that led back to the tainted drug and its Florida manufacturing plant.

Continued reading...

In most people, the bacterium has no effect. This poor boy had a weakened immune system and was waiting for a heart transplant. It is naturally occurring in dirt.

B. cepacia is a gram-negative bacterium found in soil and moist environments that is known to cause various types of infections, including catheter-associated infections and respiratory tract infections, in hospitalized patients. Although healthy individuals are not affected in most cases, those who are immunocompromised are at particular risk, as are patients with chronic respiratory illnesses, especially those with cystic fibrosis.

https://www.aafp.org/news/health-of-...7bcepacia.html

[angelatc]

The drug was eventually recalled, but only after a Texas hospital staff noticed an uptick in B. cepacia infections, prompting a six-month investigation that led back to the tainted drug and its Florida manufacturing plant.

How would this have evolved in a Utopian libertarian system?

[gaazn]

I think it's best to avoid medicines, doctors, and especially hospitals as much as you possibly can.

[donnay]

I think it's best to avoid medicines, doctors, and especially hospitals as much as you possibly can.

Sage advice.