I have PCa. I am also immune suppressed due to kidney transplant. In February I started hormone injections due to BCR. A couple of weeks later I started to get back pain. Doctor prescribed pain killers. After about 6 weeks, many blood tests, consultations and an MRI scan I was diagnosed with discitis (quite a rare disease). I was admitted to hospital and they set about finding what bacteria was causing the infection. Not long after being in hospital the infection became systemic. Fever, vomiting, uncontrolable shivering, low blood oxygen, dropping kidney function, very low blood pressure and unconsciousness occurred.Luckily intravenous amoxicillin, oxygen and other measures saved me. After 3 weeks in hospital I am out but still on oral amoxicillin and can barely walk.
I am in the UK and it seems quite common not to disinfect injection sites here. There are some studies that show it is not not required but the studies I found involved fairly small numbers of people (1500 ish) and don't mention immune suppression. Discitis is a 1 in 100000 disease for the general population, but I got it.
Of course I cannot prove I got the disease from the injection, but from now on I am going to insist that injection sites are disinfected.
Written by
Graham49
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I'm so sorry you had to go through this. I can't imagine EVER not disinfecting an injection site, never mind with an immunocompromised person. Hope your recovery continues smoothly and quickly.
Discitis is usually caused by an infection that develops in one of the spine’s vertebral bones and/or intervertebral discs. Often, discitis is a bacterial infection, but it may be viral. In the United States, the incidence of discitis is approximately 1 out of every 100,000 people, meaning it is not a common spinal disease.
What is the difference between discitis and osteomyelitis?
Discitis is an infection of the discs in the spinal column, while osteomyelitis is an infection of the bone or vertebrae. Osteomyelitis is often caused by discitis, when the infection spreads from the disc to the bone, which can occur in the cervical, thoracic and lumbar spine.
First, who thinks its necessary to spend time and money to do a study and try to figure out how to skip the 2 second step of swabbing the injection site?
Second, there are deadly bacteria (mersa, etc) that commonly live ON the skin of humans. My college room mate recently had all his heart valves eaten away by these germs.
I would say its the height of sloppy lazyness, except I think the record will be broken again any minute.
Yes, I agree. The heart valve thing was a concern for me. The hospital performed two types of ultrasonic scan to confirm that the infection was not in my heart. I was lucky.
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