A surgeon discovers a massive E. coli infection in a patient's breast implant after ruling out cancer. The bacterial load exceeded 10^5 CFU. Antibiotics cleared the infection and resolved the patient's chronic fatigue within a month.
She has an E. coli infection. Not a smattering of E. coli, a true— Crapload. A medical crapload infection. And just so the audience knows, for a hospital to identify that, there is greater than 10 to the 5th or 100,000 bacteria in that sample. And so I was pretty taken aback by that. I had missed a breast implant infection. I hadn't missed a small amount of contamination. I'd missed an entire occult infection. And so that really bothered me. And I— so I went back through all the notes and I talked to my team. I was like, uh, I don't— what is going on here? And because it was done in a hospital, as you know, they'll create an antibiotic sensitivity profile for it. And I, as tradition, I followed that, uh, profile. I put her on antibiotics, and what do you know, magically her fatigue was all better in a month.
You mean chronic infections anywhere in the body make people feel tired and have all sorts of unpredicted things when bacteria make bacterial toxins and circulate them around in your body?
Yeah, it was, it was pretty shocking.
