Plagues,
Pestilences and Diseases
Flesh-eating disease turns deadly in a matter of hours
Published On Tue Jan 24 2012
The Toronto Star
Flesh-eating disease is the medical equivalent of being struck by
lightning: it’s extremely rare and very tragic.
And the fact that it moves at breakneck speed, capable of killing
a healthy person in as little as 12 hours, makes it an especially
frightening and intriguing disease.
“You don’t have the luxury of waiting around a few days to find
out what’s going on,” says Dr. Michael Gardam, an infectious
disease specialist at University Health Network in Toronto.
“You’ve got to jump on it right away.”
The tricky thing about this bacterial infection is that typical
symptoms include skin infection and flu-like aches and pains, so
some patients and even doctors may not recognize what they’re
dealing with until it’s too late.
The disease recently sparked headlines when a Mississauga woman,
Debbie Sebesta, died from it last Wednesday. Three days earlier,
the otherwise healthy woman was complaining of a bruise and pain
in her leg. Within hours, flu-like symptoms such as chills and
vomiting had set in and were worsening by the minute.
After being rushed to hospital, Sebesta underwent surgery to
remove large part of her leg, which was infected with necrotizing
fasciitis, often called flesh-eating disease because it kills
muscle and skin as it spreads through the tissue.
Cases such as Sebesta’s are “the tip of the iceberg,” says Dr.
Neil Rau, an infectious diseases specialist with a private
practice in Oakville, who uses the analogy of being struck by
lightning to highlight their rarity.
A few years ago, one of his patients cut her index finger while
peeling an apple and became infected. Days later, the infection
spread up her arm, to the armpit and across the chest. She was
operated on, but later succumbed to the disease.
Such tragedies are rare, says Rau, noting that even in severe
cases of the disease, most people don’t die. Such was the case in
the winter of 1994 when Lucien Bouchard, then-leader of the Bloc
Québécois, was forced to have his leg amputated because of the
illness.
“For every terrible case we hear about, there are millions of
people who have no symptoms or only mild symptoms,” says Rau.
According to Health Canada, there are between 90 and 200 cases of
necrotizing fasciitis each year, about 20 to 30 per cent of which
are fatal.
Infection is caused by different strains of bacteria, including
group A streptococcus (GAS), a bacterium often found in the throat
and on the skin of healthy people. Most people who carry GAS have
no symptoms of illness and most infections are relatively mild
illnesses, such as strep throat.
Infection often develops when bacteria enters the body, usually
through a minor cut or scrape. In rare cases, that infection will
spread and release harmful toxins.
Among the telltale signs that a person may have the disease is a
small cut that may not look so bad but is causing immense pain, a
skin infection that is spreading and flu-like symptoms, such as
vomiting, diarrhea and chills.
One of the cardinal features of flesh-eating disease, says Gardam
is that “the pain is more than you’d expect from what you’re
looking at.”