Docs save newborn suffering from flesh-eating disease
BENGALURU: A month-old-baby girl, infected by a ‘Superbug’ that was eating her flesh, was saved by doctors at a private hospital here recently. The baby was suffering from a rare life-threatening infection of the skin called Necrotising fasciitis, also known as ‘flesh-eating disease’. Her parents, based in Jharkhand, approached the doctors at Aster CMI Hospital a month ago.
A team of doctors, including Dr Sudheer K A, consultant neonatologist; Dr Madhusudan G, lead consultant plastic surgeon; Dr Chetan Ginigeri, consultant PICU, and Dr Shilpa V, senior specialist at the department of paediatrics, operated on the baby.
Just five days after the baby was born, the parents noticed pus-filled vesicles on her chest. Though she was given antibiotics at a Jharkhand hospital, her condition continued to worsen. Her blood got infected, leading to high fever and respiratory distress. The child was then flown to Bengaluru. It was a case where a group of disorders characterised by various forms of highly inflammatory skin condition resulting in large fluid-filled blister-like areas seen in first four weeks of life.
The child had an innocuous looking superficial skin infection manifesting as small pus-filled boils which then eroded into the skin and underlying fascia and muscle to cause local destruction of tissues. The bug commonly known as “MRSA - Methicillin”- resistant Staphylococcus Aureus - is a bacteria which can cause life-threatening infections.
Dr Sudheer said, “Her chest was being rapidly eaten away leaving a gaping defect over the skin which would leave a scar. We had to address three issues — control blood stream infection, debride and remove dead skin and flesh — thereby controlling the source, and optimise wound care so that the baby girl did not have a gaping defect and scar over her chest wall.” Dr Chetan said, “As they are from financially less-privileged background, we made use of a crowd-funding platform to raise `7 lakh.”
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