Man's Strep Throat Leads to Amputation

Oct. 27, 2008— -- When Rick Kenma came down with a case of strep throat last February, he quickly made an appointment with his doctor to seek relief and treatment.

"I had a sore throat like anybody else might get," said Kemna, who lives in East Bethel, Minn. "I didn't ignore it. I had a doctor's appointment."

But on the night before he was to see his doctor, it became clear that this was no ordinary strep infection.

Kemna said his hands and feet went numb. And then he began to change color.

"My wife looked at my legs and they were turning a lovely shade of blue," Kemna said.

In an exceedingly rare twist, Kemna's strep infection had spread from his throat to the rest of his body. Kemna, his wife Jill, and their three children rushed him to an emergency room where he was diagnosed with toxic shock syndrome -- a dangerous, potentially fatal condition that decreases blood flow throughout the body, causing multiple organ failures.

The disastrous infection nearly took his life, and the experience would leave him a double amputee.

Such complications are so rare that, for the vast majority of the estimated 10 million Americans who suffer through strep infections every year, it should not be a cause for concern.

"It's extremely unlikely for something like this to happen, which means that people shouldn't get overly concerned about it," said Dr. Aaron Glatt, a spokesman for the Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA) and president of New Island Hospital in Bethpage, N.Y. "The odds of something like this happening are minuscule."

But in Kenma's case, the strep bacteria made the improbable jump from his sore throat to the soft tissues in his body. And the result was a struggle for his life.

Normally, strep throat can be quickly and easily treated with antibiotics, and it is normally eliminated by the body's immune system in a matter of days.

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However, in Kemna's case, the infection set into motion a cascade of events that ultimately led to toxic shock -- a form of septic shock in which streptococcal bacteria enter the bloodstream and are transferred throughout the body.