President Salvador Illa already has a diagnosis after being admitted 48 hours ago due to acute pain and loss of strength in his leg muscles. As the doctors who treated him at the Vall d’Hebron Hospital pointed out this Monday, it is an inflammation caused by a bacterial infection in the pelvic area.
The managing director of Vall d’Hebron, Albert Salazar, has explained that the disease is pubic osteomyelitis caused by the bacteria streptococcus dysgalactiae. Specifically, he has detailed that the infection is found in the pelvic area: in the pubic symphysis bone and in the external obturator muscle attached to it.
The disease is very rare, doctors have detailed, but at the same time it is “good news” due to the prospects for recovery. Illa will have to undergo antibiotic treatment and a rehabilitation process to cure the infection, which in principle should not leave any consequences.
The doctors’ forecast is that Illa will be able to leave the ICU and move to the conventional hospitalization ward this Tuesday. As Salazar explained, in the last few hours he has already experienced a “very favorable recovery” with respect to both the acute pain he suffered and the recovery of mobility in his extremities.
Regarding the recovery process, for now it is expected that he will remain hospitalized for two weeks and that he will then be able to complete the antibiotic treatment at home.
The diagnosis was confirmed this Monday after obtaining the results of urine and blood cultures and also a PET-CT imaging test. “This test is used to look for sources of infection that cannot be identified with other tests, and we have seen the source of inflammation and infection in the pubic symphysis, and in one of the muscles, the left obturator externus,” explained Manel Escobar, clinical director of Radiology at Vall d’Hebron.
These tests were confirmed this Monday by the results of the cultures. Dolors Rodríguez, head of Infectious Diseases at the hospital, has offered more details when talking about the nature of osteomyelitis, which also when it extends to the muscle, as happened to the president, it is also referred to as myositis.
He streptococcus dysgalactiae It is a bacteria that is part of the normal flora, but in specific situations it can jump into the blood and in fragile areas it can cause local infections, as Rodríguez has described. This specialist has explained that the planned treatment is intravenous antibiotics for the two weeks that he is admitted and that, if all goes well, he can finish it at home.
Rodríguez did not want to say when Illa will be able to resume her activity. But he has detailed that nothing limits his intellectual activity, since he is stable, and that functional recovery may take a few weeks.
Source: www.eldiario.es
