Woman loses arm to flesh-eating bacteria after injecting designer drug 'bath salts'

Flesh-eating bacteria, resistant to many, if not most antibiotics, have becoming headline news, so the news of a 34-year-old New Orleans woman losing her arm due an infection caused by them may not be surprising, but the use of 'bath salts' in the incident may be.

The infection known as flesh-eating bacteria syndrome is known scientifically as hecrotizing fasciitis (NF). It is a rare infection of the deeper layers of skin and subcutaneous tissues.

LSU Health Sciences Center doctor and Orthapedic Surgery resident Dr. Russel R. Russo, MD and his colleagues published the case report online in the journal Orthopedics. The unnamed woman first presented to doctors with pain in her forearm. She did not report of any other symptoms, but it was noted that there was a small puncture wound on her arm, one with surrounding redness.

Doctors treated her with a broad spectrum of intravenous antibiotics. While symptoms were drastrically reduced, pain remained. Two days later, a closer examination showed increasing redness, sloughing skin and smelly drainage from the site. The patient admitted she had injected the illicit synthetic drug commonly called "bath salts" at the site two days before the pain first developed; she was rushed into surgery.

Surgeons discovered necrotizing fasciitis or flesh-eating bacteria syndrome. According to Wikipedia, when the infection reaches this point, aggressive surgical debridement (removal of infected tissue) is always necessary. Surgeons kept removing tissue until they reached clear margins of healthy tissue. It was necessary to debride so much tissue that when the operation was complete, the patient had her arm, shoulder and collarbone amputated. In addition, doctors were forced to perform a radical mastectomy.

However, the patient survived.

Most will remember that the term "bath salts" refers to a range of "water-soluble, usually inorganic solid products designed to be added to a bath." As used here, "balt salts" are designer drugs that first became popular in Western Europe in 2009. "Balt salts" emerged in the United States in Louisiana and Kentucky in August of 2010. The drugs have been smoked, snorted, taken orally and, now, injected.

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Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

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