For my first official entries, I thought it would be good to
review over some of the information and activities we have covered so far in
the course during the first couple of weeks, particularly bacteremia and blood
cultures. This will be a two part post,
with the second half being posted next week.
Under normal circumstances and in healthy individuals, the
blood system within your body should not contain organisms of any kind, and is
considered to be a sterile body fluid.
Inevitably, due to incidences such as cuts, IV catheters, and infections
of other body sites, pathogens such as bacteria or viruses can gain access into
the blood stream. The immune system is
able to normally rid itself of these invasions in most healthy adults. Unfortunately for individuals with a weak or
compromised immune system, this can lead to a more serious complication. Since the blood system is basically a highway
throughout the body, if undiagnosed or untreated this can lead to systemic
infections that can affect various organs and may lead to death.
The terminology used to describe these conditions is based
on the responsible organism and the severity of the infection. Some of these include bacteremia, viremia,
and fungemia which indicate the presence of bacteria, viruses, and fungi in the
blood, respectively. Septicemia is another
term that is used to indicate that pathogens are present and reproducing within
the blood stream.
Hi Alex, this is Paul Hood. As I would expect, this is a well written introduction on bacteremia. Your first blog post does not intimidate the audience with large words or difficult content, making it easy for anyone to read and learn about the subject. I am curious as to how medical laboratory scientists (MLS) tell if the patient is technically experiencing bacteremia or septicemia. Is this a matter of finding multiple different pathogens in the blood stream, or is it something that is quantified by the number of bacteria of one foreign pathogen in the blood stream? Additionally, how can MLS tell if a pathogen is reproducing in the blood stream?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if these questions are within the scope of this assignment, but if you could follow up with me or address these question in your second blog, I would greatly appreciate it. I look forward to reading your next blog post. Keep up the good work!
Thanks Paul. As far as I can tell, septicemia is generally used to refer to an infection of the blood that is displaying symptoms, while bacteremia is a more specific term that indicates that the causative pathogen is a bacteria. The severity of the septicemia can be determined through multiple draws of blood cultures at different times, which can indicate the frequency that the pathogen is entering the blood stream. This is termed "transient", or present once; "intermittent", or randomly present at multiple times; and "continuous". Hopefully this information helps clear up some of the questions that my blog left.
DeleteGood article
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