For days and days on end, doctors didn’t know exactly what kind of organism they were up against.
The infection spreading through the 48-year-old Ontario woman was so aggressive, large parts of her heart were destroyed. But all the usual blood work, all the cultures for typical bacterial infections came back negative. Doctors couldn’t fully understand what was feeding the infection.
Until her sister wondered, could it be the rats?
The woman’s death last year, published in a new case report, is being described as the first reported fatal case of rat bite fever that defeated even the most advanced “Hail Mary” form of out-of-body heart and lung bypass.
The case “was a bit of a conundrum,” said cardiologist and intensivist Dr. Craig Ainsworth, chief of critical care at Hamilton Health Sciences, and co-author of the report in JACC, the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
“Normally, when we have people with that degree
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