The patient, who had previously undergone a hip replacement in 1997, went to the orthopedist after suffering from hip and buttocks pain for several months.
At the first the woman was afraid she might have had cancer in this area, so she was relieved when the scan showed no evidence of a tumor, but the doctors were not sure exactly where she was feeling.
After suspecting a type of infection in the women's industrial joint, they took part of the tissue and her hip to see if they could detect any pathogen in her blood.
she was subject to several treatment and analysis for 14 months and the doctors didn't know what the cause of this pain
but when doctor Using a molecular technique called 16S PCR, scientists finally discovered the source of the problem, a very rare infection by a bacteria called Capnocytophaga canimorsus, reported only in prosthetic devices like this twice in the medical literature, and never before with such symptoms Continuous slow growth.
In this case, the patient remembered that she had been scratched by her dog - which remains unknown - on her back for about nine months before contacting the doctors because of her thigh pain. This scratching was all that was required.
The doctors assume that the animal moved the bacteria from his mouth to his claws by licking his feet, which then enabled the woman to get infected by just scratching.
Fortunately for her, after several months of intense pain, she was injected with many antibiotics to kill the infection, and got a new artificial hip. By her last examination 15 months after surgery, doctors reported that she worked well with a pain-free hip, although the mysterious and painful memory of the bacteria (Capnocytophaga canimorsus) could not easily be forgotten.
"The fear never ends," the patient says. "The fear that something similar will happen again is always at the forefront of my mind."
Given what we know about dog psychology, it's safe to say that it probably will not feel guilty about this things.
