Pseudomonas

Well, the antibiotic Azer has been on has been causing some vomiting, but nothing too terrible. He initially said the Bactrim was helping his lungs, but a few days into it, he said his lungs felt tight. Unfortunately, the reason for this is that his culture came back, and it was positive for Pseudomonas. He hasn't cultured this since 2013.

Pseudomonas Aeruginosa (or PA), can be a very aggressive bacteria in CF. It can cause further lung damage and can be difficult to eradicate. PA is one of the reasons for boiling the nebulizer cups, as it can survive normal washing. They said he has 2 colonies of it right now. Apparently, we can think of the colonies of pseudomonas like little apartments of bacteria, each one living in a different complex. How they can figure that out from a sputum culture, I have no idea.

We will treat the Pseudo using the Tobi Podhaler again. This worked out very well last time. The normal treatment for pseudomonas is inhaled Tobramycin, or Tobi, which is an antibiotic which is inhaled. This is inhaled though the nebulizer and usually takes about 45 minutes. With the Tobi Podhaler, which only takes about 6 minutes to inhale the powdered antibiotic.

On top of the Tobi, he is going to have to do Cipro in addition to finishing his course of Bactrim. The PA has to be treated aggressively. I hope we can control or eradicate it as quickly as we did last time!