Publications by authors named "V Kak"
Introduction: This study was performed to identify patient factors associated with hospital-acquired bloodstream infections (HABSI) to guide blood culture collection and empiric antibiotic therapy.
Methods: A retrospective case-control study reviewed the medical records of 350 patients admitted to our health system from September 2017 to April 2020. The patients were 18 years and older and had at least one set of new positive non-contaminant blood cultures collected after 48 hours of admission, defined as HABSI.
Article Synopsis
- Bacteremia can occur from skin contact with bacteria or from bacteria moving from the gut into the bloodstream.
- In a specific case, a patient developed bacteremia and empyema (a collection of pus in the lung) due to lung damage from a pulmonary embolism, linked to gut issues rather than chest trauma.
- The patient had gastric ulcers and thickening in the small intestine, which likely allowed bacteria to enter the bloodstream, and he improved after surgery and antibiotics; a detailed gastrointestinal examination was recommended to find the root cause.
Article Synopsis
- Hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) is a long-lasting skin condition that occurs in areas where skin rubs together, causing painful bumps and abscesses, while Crohn's disease (CD) is a chronic inflammatory bowel issue affecting the digestive tract.
- A 35-year-old African American man with a history of CD, who had been on the medication adalimumab (Humira) for two years, developed severe HS characterized by painful sores and abscesses in multiple body areas.
- The medical team treated him with intravenous antibiotics, but his HS may have developed due to a paradoxical reaction to adalimumab, highlighting the unusual side effects of certain medications.
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is a rare and rapidly fatal neurological disease. Diagnosis is made through clinical features, imaging, electroencephalography, and cerebrospinal fluid analysis. Sporadic CJD accounts for the majority of cases and occurs due to somatic mutation in the gene or random structural change in the prion protein.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBoth Gradenigo's syndrome and Vernet syndrome are rare pathologies of the intracranial space; both involve compression of a particular anatomic location in the skull, thus affecting structures nearby or within that space. A patient presenting with one or both of these syndromes should raise concern for malignancy, head trauma, or an intracranial infection. We present a case of a 39-year-old female with three weeks of left-sided ear, face, and neck pain along with difficulty swallowing and reduced vision in the left eye.
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