AI Article Synopsis

  • A 38-year-old woman suffered severe burns (45% of her body) after an explosion during cannabis wax production, leading to multiple complications.
  • Initial medical treatment was delayed, and despite surgical interventions like debridements and grafting, her condition worsened due to recurrent infections and necrosis, including visible mold growth.
  • Ultimately, after undergoing extensive surgeries and facing multiorgan failure, her family chose to discontinue life support, and a postmortem analysis revealed infections from fungus associated with cannabis exposure.

Article Abstract

A 38 year old woman presented with burns totaling 45 % total body surface area, following an explosion resulting from manufacturing cannabis wax. Initial debridement, was delayed to hospital day 7 due to hemodynamic instability. Over the course of her, hospitalization, she required multiple debridements and grafting to her lower, extremities; grafted tissue never survived longer than 72 h. Her bilateral lower, extremities began to exhibit visible mold growth. She underwent repeated, debridements down to vitalized tissue only for recurrent necrosis and mold growth to, occur. She underwent serial amputations eventually reaching the level of her midthigh, At this point her clinical condition deteriorated further resulting in multiorgan failure., Ultimately family made the decision to remove her from life support, and she expired, within a few hours. Postmortem analysis identified Rhizopus spp, Fusarium spp, and, Geotrichum candidum. Mucormycosis species are a frequent infector of Cannabis, sativa, which our patient was working with in the inciting explosion. Cutaneous, mucormycosis is a documented but rare manifestation. We propose that the patient's, relatively young age, severity of burns, and exposure to cannabis plants resulted in this, unusual presentation.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9483795PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.idcr.2022.e01613DOI Listing

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