Health Law

Kansas 5-year-old released from hospital

By Marler Clark LLP

A five-year-old from Hutchinson, Kansas, was released from Wesley Medical Center after being hospitalized for a month with hemolytic uremic syndrome.  Aubrey Anderson's kidneys failed after she became ill with an E. coli infection in October. 

According to the Hutchinson News, Aubrey was released from the hospital to recover at home because her mother is a registered nurse.  Public health officials have yet to identify the source of Aubrey's illness, and she will continue medical follow-up for months to years.  As the Hutchinson News reported:

It will be weeks, and perhaps months, before the family knows how much the illness damaged her kidneys, and whether she'll face a lifetime of treatment or be in the clear, said her father, Bill Anderson.

"We won't know until we get at least six or seven weeks out if there's any residual scarring as a result of the E. coli," Anderson said. "If there is scarring, it may mean anywhere from a range of a kidney transplant to her maybe having to take oral medication for the rest of her life to keep her body in balance."

Initial indications were that her kidneys were functioning, so the family is optimistic she'll make a full recovery.

All persons who have experienced HUS should be formally evaluated by a nephrologist—a kidney specialist—at a year following their acute illness. Kidneys injured by HUS may slowly recover function over at least a six month period following the acute episode and perhaps longer. Even persons with “mild” HUS who did not require dialysis should be formally evaluated. Such an evaluation should include a routine physical, blood pressure measurement, and blood and urine analyses from which kidney filtration rate can be calculated.

Physicians doing follow-up on HUS patients will carefully look for indications of kidney injury. These will include whether there is an abnormal amount of protein in the urine that may signal a significant injury to the kidneys or blood in the urine which also can reflect kidney injury. As assessment of the HUS patient’s glomerular filtration rate—“GFR”—is essential to determining whether the kidneys are functioning in the range of normal for that person age, sex, and size. It is also important to establish a baseline GFR so that future assessment of kidney function can reflect any potential loss of filtering capacity over time.

Studies done to date on HUS outcomes have largely confirmed a positive correlation between more severe kidney involvement acutely, particularly the need for extended dialysis, an increased incidence of future renal complications. However, it has been shown in multiple studies that even moderate kidney compromise in the acute phase of HUS can result in long-term complications due to damage to the filtering units in the kidneys.

Full post as published by e.Coli Blog on December 03, 2007 (boomark / email).