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MEDICAL MALPRACTICE
your being viewed as having made every reasonable prevention effort.
OSM
Mr. Landess (william.landess@palmettohealth.org) is the director of anesthesia for Palmetto Health Richland in Columbia, S.C.
TAINTED STEROIDS: ABSCESSES AND ARACHNOIDITIS
Compounding Victims Continue to Mount
T
he fungal meningitis epidemic appears to
be waning, but now patients injected with
tainted steroids from the now-shuttered
New England Compounding Center (NECC) face 2
other scourges: painful abscesses around the
injection site and a debilitating chronic pain disor-
NOT OVER YET The CDC says tainted
steroids are to blame for late-onset
abscesses and arachnoiditis.
der called arachnoiditis, a nerve inflammation that can cause intense pain, bladder
problems and numbness. The CDC reports that many who were disease-free a
month after their steroid injections — and presumably after the incubation period
— are now developing abscesses that require long hospitalizations and often surgery. Additionally, the CDC says that some patients who have been treated for
meningitis and released have returned to the hospital with abscesses at the injection site. Half of otherwise asymptomatic patients — yes, half — showed evidence of new or worsening localized spinal or paraspinal infections, including
epidural abscess, phlegmon, arachnoiditis, discitis or vertebral osteomyelitis.
Since the meningitis outbreak, 15 state boards of pharmacy now mandate that
individual patient prescriptions must accompany every compounded medication.
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— Stephanie Wasek
O U T PAT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | F E B R U A R Y 2013
