Prayers continuing!
Prayers continuing!
Dear Lord: Please wrap Your arms around our Rep. and help him to recover fully from whatever is wrong...You are the Greatest Physician ever and send Your Angels to be with him and his family at this time.
Amen.
http://www.nola.com/national_politics/2017/07/sepsis_is_common_risk_for_guns.html
Steve Scalise shooting: Infection common risk for gunshot victims
Updated on July 6, 2017 at 5:25 PMPosted on July 6, 2017 at 6:24 PM
By Littice Bacon-Blood
lbacon-blood@nola.com
NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
Congressman Steve Scalise underwent surgery Thursday (July 7) after doctors at a Washington, D.C., hospital readmitted him to an intensive care unit the night before with concerns over infection. A local trauma surgeon says such infections create a risk for sepsis, a condition that can damage vital organs and is very common among gunshot victims.
Scalise was one of five people wounded June 14 when a gunman opened fire on a baseball practice for Republican members of Congress at an Alexandria, Virginia, park. He was in critical condition and at “imminent risk of death” when he arrived at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, the facility top trauma surgeon said.
Intra-abdominal sepsis is commonly associated with the type of trauma injuries that Scalise sustained and best treated in an intensive care unit, said Dr. Juan Duchesne, a trauma surgeon and professor of surgery at Tulane University.
Duchesne, who also is the trauma ICU director at University Medical Center, is not one of Scalise’s physicians and has not reviewed the congressman’s medical records. His assumptions are based on reports doctors at MedStar Washington Hospital Center have provided to the public and his own experience in treating gunshot victims.
Severe wounds can lead to sepsis, which can threaten major organs such as the heart, lungs or kidneys, Duchesne said. It is not uncommon for an infection to develop weeks after surgery, which is why surveillance is key when treating trauma patients, he said.
Sepsis is diagnosed through blood tests, which could indicate the presence of bacteria in the blood stream. Symptoms can include high fever, increase in heart rate, low blood pressure or change in mental state such as becoming confused.
There are “new concerns for infection,” a hospital news release said.
“By having at least two out of three symptoms ... you have a high likelihood of having some kind of sepsis,” Duchesne said. “... The body is mounting some kind of response to potential infection, and that obviously raises suspicion as to where is this coming from. In a patient with a surgical intervention, the number one source will be looking into the abdomen.”
There are different categories of sepsis, Duchesne said
“If you have flu, technically you are septic,” he said. “But when sepsis affects one or two organs, that’s when it’s considered severe sepsis. When sepsis affects your blood pressure, that’s when it’s considered septic shock, and that is what you want to avoid, and what you don’t want to see because that group of patients needs close monitoring in ICU as well with aggressive resuscitation.”
Caught early, both forms of sepsis are treatable, he said.
“When I was listening to the news yesterday, and they said (Rep. Scalise) was moved to ICU. I could see the two sides of the coin because people get alarmed, ‘Oh my God, ICU.’ But .... when I hear ICU, I only understand better care,” Duchesne said. “When I heard that it gave me comfort because I know he will be taken good care of in ICU, and they made the right decision.”
Scalise could be suffering from a less severe condition, such as pneumonia or a urinary tract infection, but Duchesne said trauma patients with those types of infections are typically treated “on the floor” as opposed to the ICU.
In addition, most hospitals generally follow the Society for Critical Care Medicine’s guidelines for treating sepsis, which recommends treatment in ICU, he said.
In Scalise’s case, a single gunshot wound to his left hip fractured bones, damaged internal organs and caused severe bleeding, according doctors at MedStar Washington. He has undergone multiple surgeries since being shot and was moved out of the ICU on June 23.
“Incidents for infection under those circumstances can be as high as 30 percent for intra-abdominal sepsis,” he said. “For this group of patients, it is important that we keep close surveillance of them, and make sure they don’t have any of the risk factors or early factors that will predict or tell us that the patient is having early sepsis.”
Once sepsis is suspected, patients are moved to ICU and are treated with antibiotics and “aggressive resuscitation with fluids,” Duchesne said.
And yet DC Republicans are still going to parties and social events with vile Democrats..
Anybody know exactly where the bullet penetrated? Where the infection came from? Original injury or post op wounds?
He’s healthy, he should end up OK.
Prayers won’t hurt.
The stuff that lives in your gut is not meant to mingle with any other parts of your innards. I am praying for him.