Free Republic

After what was thought to be a simple case of the flu, 8-year-old Kinsley Sandvik died on Valentine’s Day. (Courtesy Shannon Sandvik) For one family in Calvert County, Maryland, Valentine’s Day will always be connected to heartbreak: the day when they lost their 8-year-old girl. Kinsley Sandvik had a vibrant laugh and, according to her mother, everyone was her friend. “If you met her, you fell in love with her. No one was a stranger to this child, not even the pizza man,” said mom Shannon Sandvik. “I’d say, ‘Don’t talk to strangers,’ and she’d say, ‘I’m not,’ and I’d...

SNIPPET: "The death rate can be as high as 60 percent for people with underlying medical problems, and some 250,000 Americans die of severe sepsis annually. A clinical trial of a new device to treat severe sepsis – the leading cause of death in hospital intensive care units – is under way at University Medical Center. "This study is important because sepsis is a life-threatening illness, and it's increased every year in the past 20 years despite all our advances in medicine," said Dr. Harold Szerlip, professor in the University of Arizona Department of Medicine and UA principal investigator of...

FDA Issues Health Advisory for Mifepristone Citing Four Sepsis-Related Deaths Among Users; Drug Labeling To Be Updated 21 Jul 2005 FDA on Tuesday issued a... public health advisory warning physicians to watch for any signs of sepsis or other infection among women who have taken Danco Laboratories' Mifeprex -- known generically as mifepristone -- which when taken with misoprostol can cause a medical abortion, the AP/Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports. The agency is investigating four sepsis-related deaths among women who took the drug, including two cases reported to FDA in April and June (Neergaard, AP/Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 7/20). Physicians have identified the bacterium...