Did you know that in-hospital mortality increases dramatically when complete system removal is delayed in the case of CIED infection? In this patient story, Mr. Kostoss shares how negative blood cultures led to a delay in getting the treatment needed.
Yeah. My name is Robert Costas. I was born with a congenital heart condition, and I wish I knew Transfusion of the Greater Arteries was born a blue baby. The cure for that was to put in a pacemaker That basically gives you the little tiny bit of an electrical charge to keep you for elevated pulse. I went in. Everything was great. No complications. They stitched me up. Everything seemed to be normal for the first week instead of shrinking. You know, it just kept on expanding and expanding. I went back to the hospital where all the surgery was done the following week. They did blood cultures. They actually did like a swab on the scarred area. And they had me do regular blood work on. Everything came back negative. Unfortunately, that never healed. And I kept on getting worse. Went back to the hospital. We had all kinds of tests again. Blood, cultures, swabs, everything else on everything comes back negative. What would happen is in the evenings, especially I would develop night sweats where I mean, I would bed when I woke up, was literally saturated. Um then I would also get into a little bit of a shaking spell. I had no idea what this Waas I called. And actually, my regular family doctor told the way to what was going on and that nurses, you haven't overnight us. That's what you're describing coming to without fault. She was. I want you to go to the hospital and get it taken care off. And when they did that test, they saw the infection that was actually on the device in the league itself, and they knew for sure what was happening. And that's when Dr Clancy comes in. So when I was first called to say, Bob and I first went to the chart and looked at the data and then went to talk to him and saw his wound, I was actually astonished that the situation have gone on to this point. And I'm sure you were going through some scary thoughts because despite them telling you, everything seems okay. You were getting worse and worse and to go to the hospital and to talk to people and go well, yes, it may look worse, but again, everything's coming back negative the same time. It's your body, and you're just seeing this wound opening more and more, it gets a little disconcerting, to say the least. The key thing here is education and empowering the patients with the knowledge to know themselves that what they're hearing isn't the right course of action, especially for someone like Bob. Bob is a congenital heart patient. He not only has leads in, but he has other hardware and from previous corrections of his heart. These air my symptoms. Please also listen to my symptoms and not just rely on ah, blood work I can't emphasize enough to for lack of better words like ask the tough questions. I'm also one of those that believe things happen for a reason. So maybe this happened to me so that it won't happen to somebody else.
