Bengaluru: Doctors give wheelchair-bound man new lease of life

Bengaluru: City doctors gave Ali (name changed), a 47-year-old man from Saudi Arabia, battling with multiple surgeries and recurring infection, a new lease of life. He was either wheelchair-bound or using crutches without putting weight on the injured leg to mobilize himself.

Primary surgery was conducted for Ali 7 years ago for fixation of fracture, when he had met with the bike accident, which unfortunately got infected and hence failed. For further treatment, he flew to Germany where two surgeries were performed to cure the infection before a third surgery for revision fixation was done for his fracture. He returned back to his country but the fracture never healed, as a result, he could not walk.

He consulted Columbia Asia Hospital Whitefield seven months ago when he was an uncontrolled diabetic and had experienced recurring infection in the same operated area. “When he actually consulted us, he was in a septic shock with his HBA1C (marker of blood sugar) about 16 which is very high. All his septic parameters were very high, raised white blood cells to count, neutrophil and dropping blood pressure. These were factors of grade 1 to 2 septic shock, so we admitted him under ICU, initially managed the sepsis as that takes the priority, because it can kill the person," said Dr. Veera Reddy, Senior Consultant-Orthopaedics, Columbia Asia Hospital Whitefield. After controlling the parameters, Ali was taken to the operation theatre (OT) to clean the infections as the first resort. On the whole, it took almost a month and a half to two months to bring him back to his physiological state from sepsis and cure his infection. But his road to recovery was neither short nor smooth.  

During this time, he had grown a gram of negative organisms in the culture of his pus sample, which were sensitive to certain antibiotics, while he was already on antibiotics. So it took almost three & a half months to treat the infection and then all the raised inflammatory parameters were monitored frequently and returned to normal.

Ali also had inflammatory markers. “Post this we gave him a trial of the antibiotic-free period to see whether his infection triggers or not and fortunately with multiple debridement’s and antibiotics, we managed to cure his infection and then did a femur replacement for him,” added Dr. Veera Reddy.  Because of multiple surgeries, the patient had a shortening of about 8 inches in that leg, so to counter that the doctors gave him a leg extension Orthosis. And finally, after a long wait of seven years, he could walk on his leg again.