Case Study 1: Fresh Milk
A 3 year old child was brought to the emergency room with a complaint of frequent bloody diarrhea, fever, and chills. His parents say he has been that way for the past day and a half. The parents also say that they think that the problem began the day after they returned from a visit to a dairy farm on the edge of town. When asked the parents say that while on the farm the child had tasted fresh milk straight from the cow.
a. What could be the causative agent /s for this individual's infection?
b. What practices lead to this patient's infection?
c. What precautions could he have taken to prevent this from happening?
d. Why and how does diarrhea happen upon a bacterial infection?
e. Milk sours even if kept refrigerated all the time? Why?
Case Study 2: Liposuction
Liposuction procedure is common in hospitals and involves making a small surgical cut and using a needle for fat suctioning. The needles (cannulae) are routinely cleaned with tap water and soap followed by a quaternary ammonium compound (quat). The hospital during a 17 month period had nine out of 12 patients who acquired a surgical site infection within two months after liposuction. Upon close examination of the wound it was found that tissue around the surgical site appeared to have a bluish tinge. It was confirmed that the blue tinge was not due to inflammation or blood clotting. After testing it was also found that the infections were not due to Mycobacterium, Staphylococcus, or endospore forming bacteria.
a. What organism could be causing the infection?
b. Why does the wound appear to have a bluish tinge?
c. Why was this microbe not affected by the quat treatment?
d. What other patients often develop an infection with this microbe?