Author Archives: Adam Peck

Urinary tract infections, or UTIs, are a common infection that affect more women than men. Most often, they are treated quickly and effectively with antibiotics, the infection becoming a distant memory. Unfortunately, not all UTIs are treated quickly and some aren’t even identified quickly, particularly in people who have limited no sensation below the waist or unable to speak for themselves.

An untreated UTI may spread to the kidney, causing more pain and illness. It can also cause sepsis. The term urosepsis is usually used to describe sepsis caused by a UTI.

Sometimes called blood poisoning, sepsis is the body’s often deadly response to infection or injury. Sepsis kills and disables millions and requires early suspicion and rapid treatment for survival.

People shouldn’t die from a UTI, but if sepsis begins to take over and develops to severe sepsis and then to septic shock, this is exactly what can happen. More than half the cases of urosepsis among older adults are caused by a UTI. Worldwide, one-third of people who develop sepsis die. Many who do survive are left with organ dysfunction and/or amputations.

What Is a Urinary Tract Infection?

A urinary tract infection is an infection in the urinary tract, which runs from your kidneys, through the ureters, the urinary bladder and out through the urethra. UTIs are very common and in general, easy to treat.

A lower UTI, the more common type, affects the lower part of the urinary tract, the urethra and urinary bladder. Infection of the urethra is called urethritis and of the bladder is called cystitis. If the kidney is infected, called pyelonephritis, this is an upper UTI, as the kidney is the highest part of the urinary tract.

A UTI can be caused by bacteria (the most common type of infection) or a fungus.

How Do You Get a UTI?

The design of the human body makes it so it isn’t difficult to get a bacterial UTI, because the infection comes from outside, through the urethra. Although the UTI is a sterile environment, free of bacteria, the genital area is not. The bacteria can be near the opening of the urethra and find its way in, either through wiping after going to the bathroom, sexual activity, or unsanitary conditions. Once the bacteria has entered the urethra, the body tries its best to fight it off, but sometimes the immune system can’t do this, the bacteria multiply, and cause the infection.

In the case of a fungal infection, usually the fungus gets to the urinary tract through the blood stream. Those who develop this type of infection are usually ill with a disease that has compromised their immune system, such as AIDS. (Sepsis and HIV/AIDS)

In general, women get more UTIs than do men and this increases with age. Statistics show that many women get more than one. Almost 20% of women who have had one UTI will go on to have a second. Of this 20%, 30% of those will have a third, and in turn, 80% of these women will have more.

Medical professionals have been debating the exact definition of sepsis for decades. However, one thing they can agree upon is the origin of the disease. The word sepsis comes from the Greek meaning “decay” or “to putrefy.” In medical terms, sepsis is defined as either “the presence of pathogenic organisms or their toxins in the blood and tissues” or “the poisoned condition resulting from the presence of pathogens or their toxins as in septicemia.”

Patients are given a diagnosis of sepsis when they develop clinical signs of infections or systemic inflammation; sepsis is not diagnosed based on the location of the infection or by the name of the causative microbe. Physicians draw from a list of signs and symptoms in order to make a diagnosis of sepsis, including abnormalities of body temperature, heart rate, respiratory rate, and white blood cell count. Sepsis may be diagnosed in a 72-year-old man with pneumonia, fever, and a high white blood count, and in a 3-month-old with appendicitis, low body temperature, and a low white count.

Sepsis is defined as severe when these findings occur in association with signs of organ dysfunction, such as hypoxemia, oliguria, lactic acidosis, elevated liver enzymes, and altered cerebral function. Nearly all victims of severe sepsis require treatment in an intensive care unit for several days or weeks. While most cases of sepsis are associated with disease or injury, many events follow routine, even elective surgery.

More frightening is that sepsis can rage in response to incidents as seemingly benign as a playground scrape or a nicked cuticle from the beauty parlor. American hospitals spend approximately $20 billion each year combating sepsis, 40% of patients diagnosed with severe sepsis do not survive. Until a cure for sepsis is found, early detection is the surest hope for survival.

A Yucaipa-based nursing home is named with three people in a criminal complaint filed by the California Attorney General’s Office alleging elder abuse.

Braswell’s Hampton Manor, Barbara Davis, 44, and Timothy Walker, 56, entered pleas of not guilty at an arraignment on December 22, 2011 in San Bernardino Superior Court.

The nursing home, Davis, Walker and a third person, Amy Nicole Hillrich, are each charged with one felony count of elder abuse causing great bodily injury occurring on Aug. 6, according to court records. The case was filed Dec. 16.

Hillrich, 38, was scheduled for video arraignment Thursday afternoon, according to court personnel. But it was not known if she had been arraigned.

Davis and Walker were released on their own recognizance. They return to court March 12.

In a separate case, Hillrich and David Olvera, 25, and Emilio Pelayo Saldana, 22, face murder charges in the death of Hillrich’s ex-husband, John Hillrich, of Fontana, on Aug. 16 in Ontario.

Hillrich, Olvera and Saldana are being held without bail at West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga, according to the Sheriff’s Department.