E Coli Lawyer & Attorney : Marler Clark Law Firm : E. coli Blog

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WAVE TV reported Saturday that Sidney Jacobi, a 6-year-old child who is part of the E. coli outbreak among Galena Elementary School students, is home from the hospital.  Sidney sustained the most serious injures of any child hospitalized during the outbreak, suffering hemolytic uremic syndrome, which caused kidney failure.  WAVE interviewed Sidney's mother about her illness and return home:

"She was so fluid and puffy that she didn't look like herself," Marcia said.

During the time she was in the hospital, Sidney received cards from hundreds of people. Some that knew her and many that didn't.

Sidney is still recovering. High blood pressure is still a concern.

"We still have to watch her kidneys and our numbers still need to come down," said Marcia.

Follow-up treatment for victims of E. coli and hemolytic uremic syndrome is very important, and all persons who have experienced HUS should be formally evaluated by a nephrologist—a kidney specialist—at a year following their acute illness. Kidneys injured by HUS may slowly recover function over at least a six month period following the acute episode and perhaps longer. Even persons with “mild” HUS who did not require dialysis should be formally evaluated. Such an evaluation should include a routine physical, blood pressure measurement, and blood and urine analyses from which kidney filtration rate can be calculated.

Physicians doing follow-up on HUS patients will carefully look for indications of kidney injury. These will include whether there is an abnormal amount of protein in the urine that may signal a significant injury to the kidneys or blood in the urine which also can reflect kidney injury. As assessment of the HUS patient’s glomerular filtration rate—“GFR”—is essential to determining whether the kidneys are functioning in the range of normal for that person age, sex, and size. It is also important to establish a baseline GFR so that future assessment of kidney function can reflect any potential loss of filtering capacity over time.

Studies done to date on HUS outcomes have largely confirmed a positive correlation between more severe kidney involvement acutely, particularly the need for extended dialysis, an increased incidence of future renal complications. However, it has been shown in multiple studies that even moderate kidney compromise in the acute phase of HUS can result in long-term complications due to damage to the filtering units in the kidneys.