I remember the lady in Tennessee (I think) who went into the hospital to deliver her baby but left with no arms or legs.
The mortality rate can be much higher than a third:
The reported mortality in patients with necrotizing fasciitis has ranged from 20% to as high as 80%. [40, 27, 29, 41] Pathogens, patient characteristics, infection site, and speed of treatment are among the variables that affect survival. What is the mortality rate for necrotizing fasciitis?
I am a survivor, and here is my pro-tip: If you have a scratch or cut that turns red and hot, go immediately to the ER. Do not wait. Your life depends upon it.
Thanks for the valuable tip. Five years ago we moved to a community with a lot of history & a lot of older people, as well as a wonderful hospital. I think we may need that medical resource in the future.
Hospitals themselves can be dangerous. There are no curtains in the major hospitals here anymore; they thought they had great protocols until they checked those ER curtains. Now they have no-touch sliding doors.
A month after my hospitalization, a prominent member of the community stepped out onto his own driveway barefoot and cut himself on something. The pain was so weird that he took himself to the ER a few hours later. A few hours after that, his leg was amputated. Within a day he was dead.
So it can kill you just that fast, and remember that ordinary antibiotics don't touch this stuff.
…
So it can kill you just that fast, and remember that ordinary antibiotics don't touch this stuff.
Flesh-eating infection caused by two microbe strains discovered by doctors | Science | The Guardian
Infection found in patient who required quadruple amputation after developing rare condition
Doctors have discovered an aggressive flesh-eating infection that spreads around the body when two strains of microbe combine to overcome the host’s defences.
The infection was found in a patient who required a quadruple amputation after they developed necrotising fasciitis, a rare bacterial condition that is lethal in nearly a third of cases, even when treatment is on hand.
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When you visit the doctor's office or hospital, always remember to wash your hands with soap & warm water before leaving. Those alcohol-based hand sanitizers that you see all over the place have their own problems: bacteria that have developed an immunity to alcohol.
And we're running out of 'ordinary' antibiotics. Why? Because they aren't the Lipitors & Prozacs that you have to take every day for the rest of your life. Big pharma is not putting money into new antibiotics because the cash return isn't there.
This is correct, and it's scary. The NIH should fund public novel antibiotic discovery and production, as for profit industry isn't going to do it. If there was a research facility like that in my area, I'd probably apply.
FDA funds orphan drug trials (see Orphan Products Clinical Trials Grants Program | FDA), for those that look promising. Given the need & how long the window's been closing, I would think that there's a similar program up & running to develop more antibiotics - or functional equivalents - PDQ.
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