Superbugs: overuse of antibiotics creates three highly dangerous infectious agents, CDC warns

Shouldn't surprise. I mean, if everything we use kills "99.9% of all bacteria," what do you think that 0.1% is?

Two years ago I got a post-surgical infection following back surgery. The nerves in the epidural area near the site of the surgery were covered in this "stuff." It first resulted nerve trauma that left my left leg weak for almost a year, and a permanent condtion called "foot drop."

Within about month after the surgery, I developed 103.5 degree fevers (hot for an adult) that wouldn't quit. I ended up back in the hospital for over a week with an "epidural abcess." The debridement surgery to clean out the infection lasted almost 5 hours. While still in the hospital I had a PICC line inserted so that, when I went home, I could infuse special pressurized balls of antibiotics into the PICC line twice a day for 8 weeks.

I knew that "hospital infections" were a risk, but I was in this bright, shinny new facility (like that mattered), and I somehow didn't think it would happen to me.

This is a huge problem and likely to get worse as there is not a lot of research into new antibiotics going on. All the big pharma players got out of the field in the 90s.

Good thing I never leave the house.

Tinman,

1) Foot drop makes me cry. Foot drop is one of the most unacceptably needless and entirely preventable bullshit PERMANENT injuries that a boneheaded and thoroughly negligent healthcare worker can allow to happen to some poor unsuspecting patient. It takes a few months for foot drop to set in, but when it does it can never be reversed. I am so sorry that happened to you.

2) Well over 80% of the tens of thousands of tons of antibiotics that get manufactured in the USA every year are used in agricultural operations and industrial applications (ie the insides of mechanical equipment). Only a small fraction gets used in humans. So any stop-the-build-up-of-resistance outcry as justification for limiting antibiotic usage in human medicine is a total fraud. Way too much gets used on farm animals in their daily feed, and way too much gets washed away from those farms into rivers lakes and streams, polluting our environment, harming wildlife, and adding to the increased resistance THAT way.

dfwtinman said:

Two years ago I got a post-surgical infection following back surgery. The nerves in the epidural area near the site of the surgery were covered in this "stuff." It first resulted nerve trauma that left my left leg weak for almost a year, and a permanent condtion called "foot drop."

Within about month after the surgery, I developed 103.5 degree fevers (hot for an adult) that wouldn't quit. I ended up back in the hospital for over a week with an "epidural abcess." The debridement surgery to clean out the infection lasted almost 5 hours. While still in the hospital I had a PICC line inserted so that, when I went home, I could infuse special pressurized balls of antibiotics into the PICC line twice a day for 8 weeks.

I knew that "hospital infections" were a risk, but I was in this bright, shinny new facility (like that mattered), and I somehow didn't think it would happen to me.

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I can relate to this. I brought my wife home six days ago after she'd spent 8 weeks in the hospital being treated for MRSA infections. As a paraplegic, she is, like all paras and quads, subject to skin breakdown that often leads to pressure ulcers (aka bed sores, pressure sores, decubitus ulcers). I'd been taking her to a local wound center for treatment and apparently she picked up a really bad bug or bugs there. The pressure ulcer, after months of treatment with first improvement, then regression, suddenly went really bad, all the way to the bone. She was hospitalized, had surgery and 8 weeks of three different antibiotics, infused by IV. Those super bugs are bad stuff.

AncientEagle said:

I can relate to this. I brought my wife home six days ago after she'd spent 8 weeks in the hospital being treated for MRSA infections. As a paraplegic, she is, like all paras and quads, subject to skin breakdown that often leads to pressure ulcers (aka bed sores, pressure sores, decubitus ulcers). I'd been taking her to a local wound center for treatment and apparently she picked up a really bad bug or bugs there. The pressure ulcer, after months of treatment with first improvement, then regression, suddenly went really bad, all the way to the bone. She was hospitalized, had surgery and 8 weeks of three different antibiotics, infused by IV. Those super bugs are bad stuff.

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Sorry to hear this AE. That sounds awful. Keep both your spirits up (illness like this can bring on the blues). All my best.

Plot Device said:

Tinman,

1) Foot drop makes me cry. Foot drop is one of the most unacceptably needless and entirely preventable bullshit PERMANENT injuries that a boneheaded and thoroughly negligent healthcare worker can allow to happen to some poor unsuspecting patient. It takes a few months for foot drop to set in, but when it does it can never be reversed. I am so sorry that happened to you.

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Thanks PD (and Yorkist)

You nailed it PD. The original neurological event was two weeks post surgery (and their solution was yet another epidural steroid lumbar injection, that very day).

But it didn't help. It was right around two months post surgery that I figured out the foot drop myself --because every time I encountered uneven ground, or even a slight step-up, my foot caught and I did a full on face-plant. Not the greatest thing when recovering from back surgery. If I hadn't complained, insistently, they wouldn't have caught the infection when they did.

When I kept complaining about tripping, they finally scheduled an MRI. The report said: either this guy went out and had more surgery without telling you, or there is infection in his epidural space. That lead to a phone call asking me to report to a lab for immediate blood work to confirm infection, and a call the next day (on a Saturday morning) to show up for surgery in 2 hours ("and plan to stay a week or two").

As you likely know, I know must now wear a brace. It is basically a "L" shape. The horizontal piece is shaped like the sole of my foot and slips into my shoes under the insole. The vertical piece runs up the outside of my leg to just below the knee, and then attaches around the leg with Velcro straps. Ergo, when my leg comes up, so does my foot. After this much time, though there is no prospect for improvement, I am more or less used to it all.

My ballroom dancing days are over, but I am learning to twerk-in-place. So, I've got that working for me


(Sorry for the whining. But it beats screaming)

Plot Device said:

Well over 80% of the tens of thousands of tons of antibiotics that get manufactured in the USA every year are used in agricultural operations...

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The practice helps keep infections down, at least in the short term, and, for reasons no one really understands, it pushes animals to fatten to slaughter weight faster.

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I knew of this before, but it still makes me so angry. Agribusiness screwing us any way they can come up with. Employing a practice with unfathomable risk for human health while feeding us substandard meat. And it's considered good practice, a way of making profit that is to be admired.

Tinman and Eagle, I am so sorry about what happened to you and your family. Infection has always been a hazard in hospitals - back in my grandmother's childhood, the old folks used to deride hospitals as the place you went to die - but I'd say it's far worse now in the 21st century not only because it's really bad but because we're supposed to be better at this now. It's infuriating.

I would never want to go back to a world without antibiotics, but we have definitely swung the pendulum all the way to the other side where the benefits of using them are completely lost. Back in my grandmother's youth, a cut could kill you. Today, it can kill you again. It's definitely time to adjust the dosage.

Foot drop does not mean an abscess. It could be, it just doesn't mean abscess. I had foot drop for about 5 years and not from any spinal problem. It was due to other metabolic problems.

If there is an abscess, the surgical idiom is that the sun should not set on pus. (Drain it immediately! That might mean a needle drain or open filet or anything in between) Antibiotics only go where blood, bile or urine flow (depending upon the antibiotic and how they are cleared). In the case of an abscess, that is none of those. No antibiotic will work in the face of a true abscess. They need to be drained first.

That said, yes, routine and indiscriminant use of antibiotics in the face of viral diseases or worse, routine use in livestock feed has evolved tougher bacteria.