You are a health-care professional involved in the treatment of an elderly patie

Question

You are a health-care professional involved in the treatment of an elderly patient receiving outpatient hemodialysis through a central vascular catheter. During preparation for hemodialysis treatment on a particularly hectic day, you skip a step in your facility’s hand hygiene protocol and are not careful while putting on your gloves. Just a few cells of a Psuedomonas aeruginosa strain are wiped from your hand onto the outside of your glove and are then deposited at the edge of the patient’s catheter. Just 5 of these cells are pushed further into the catheter, adhere to the plastic and start dividing. The patient finishes hemodialysis treatment and goes home. The generation time of this P aeruginosa strain growing as a biofilm on the catheter, under these conditions is 5 hours.

i) How many bacteria are present in the catheter after 48 hours?

After 48 hrs., the patient returns for another hemodialysis treatment. During this second treatment, the clump of K. pneumoniae cells in the catheter are flushed into the patient’s bloodstream. Some cells in the biofilm are dead, but a total of 25 cells remain alive, disperse in the patient’s bloodstream and begin dividing. Eventually, the patient is rushed to the emergency room with symptoms of sepsis. At the time she is admitted to the hospital, it is determined that she has 102 cells/mL of P. aeruginosa in her blood. If she has 3.9 L of blood in her body,

ii) how many total bacteria cells are in her blood at the time she is rished to the hospital?

iii) How many generations have the bacteria been through from the time the cells entered her blood until she arrived at the hospital?

iv) How many days have passed since the bacteria entered her blood? (Assume a constant generation time of 5 hours)

Explanation / Answer

1. The no.of cells after 48 hours (64 divisions) assuming that 45 minutes is doubling time for one cell to double cell of pseudomonas. 264= 18,446,744,073,709,551,616=1.8×1019 cells.

2.if 102 cells/ml of blood is present then in total no.of cells present in total blood(3.9l) is 102×3900=397,800 cells.

3. G=t/n =64 genarations

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