In year June 2021, my father underwent a surgery for enlarged prostate. During this surgery he got infected with drug resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa. He started having high fever post the surgery and was treated with antibiotics. But the fever was not going away. He was on continuous antibiotics treatment. Even if the fever goes away, it used to come back after 2-3 days again.
He had multiple hospitalization during the whole month of June. His blood tests were not showing the bacteria. He started to have issues with his memory and was not able to recognize us. We took him to a multi-specialty hospital in Jalandhar at this time and got to know that he has infection in his heart valve and that he has a septic shock. He was put off antibiotics for 2-3 days and then his blood culture tests were done and for the first time the culture tests showed drug resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection. It was sensitive on very few 5th generation antibiotics and was mostly resistant to all the antibiotics.
His fever started to decrease but never went away completely. After a month’s treatment he started to have consistent cough and difficulty in breathing. We took him to Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Delhi and we got to know that his lungs were also now infected with drug resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa along with his heart.
The doctors there kept on pushing us for his heart valve replacement surgery. But I knew that if we go for it then the new valve being an artificial valve will have a greater chance of getting the infection as his infection was not cured. Also, by now the resistance of the bacteria has increased and it was only partially sensitive to Colistin and was resistant all other antibiotics.
At this point I got to know about bacteriophages through my sister-in-law. I understood that this is our last resort. So, we took the standard bacteriophages which covered Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Post using the bacteriophages his tests were showing higher TLC count, which meant to us that the bacteriophages are working and breaking the biofilms. We gave him oral doses and through catheter and used on his wound. For his heart infection we gave it with his oxygen mask. We went on and off with it.
Then we shifted him back to Jalandhar and then continued again with phage therapy and for a longer period this time and we gradually saw him getting better. He completely got rid of his infection after 5 months of total hospitalization and after 2 months of bacteriophage application.
If we would have shown more faith in phage therapy then he may have got better in lesser time, I guess. Also, after using phages his infections started to show sensitivity on a greater number of antibiotics and drug resistance of bacteria decreased. Throughout we used phages along with antibiotics application. I don’t think that we could have saved him without using phage therapy.
