- BOSTON (UPI) -- A Massachusetts
retiree has died from a rare form of flesh-eating bacteria he apparently
contracted while fishing, a report said Friday.
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- It started with a sore little finger.
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- Albert Holt Jr., 69, of Marion, Mass., an avid fisherman,
was hooked in both hands last month while taking a bluefish off a line.
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- His son was able to cut one of the hooks out, but the
other had to be removed at a hospital.
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- Two weeks later, on July 15, he came home from another
fishing trip in his 24-foot homemade skiff complaining of soreness in his
pinkie finger.
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- According to Friday's New Bedford Standard Times, his
wife, Linda, at first did not believe anything was seriously wrong, but
as the pain intensified, she took him to Tobey Hospital in Wareham.
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- A doctor there initially believed the swelling in the
finger was just gout, prescribed an anti-inflammatory drug, and sent him
home.
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- A few hours later that night, however, the whole hand
had swelled up and turned black, and Holt went back to the hospital. The
doctor this time said he had never seen anything like it, and Holt was
rushed to the New England Medical Center in Boston.
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- Doctors there diagnosed Holt's illness as photobacterium
damsela, a rare but virulent marine pathogen that advances much quicker
than other types of flesh-eating bacteria.
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- While more common forms of bacteria that eats the soft
tissue under the skin -- known as necrotizing fasciitis -- afflict some
1,500 people per year, the New England Journal of Medicine reported in
2000 there were just 17 known cases of the faster-moving bacteria that
killed Holt.
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- Racing against time to stay ahead of the rapidly spreading
bacteria, doctors performed surgery four times on Holt over the next 24
hours, first removing his hand, then his arm, then portions of his back
and side.
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- As his vital organs began shutting down in the following
days, Holt was put on life support, but that was shut off on July 30, and
Holt died 38 hours later.
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- "He loved fishing, and it was just a freak thing"
that he became infected, Linda Holt said.
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- "It could have been on a fish," she said. "It's
a bacteria that lives in the water."
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- Because Marion is a fishing community, Linda Holt cautioned
others who come home from fishing feeling an acute pain or soreness, particularly
in an extremity, to take it seriously and immediately see a doctor.
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- "We wouldn't want what happened to Al to happen
to someone else," she said. "It was horrendous."
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- Copyright © 2002 United Press International
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- http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20020809-121714-8896r
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