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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · Ibnosina Journal of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences 2019; 11(01): 38-40
DOI: 10.4103/ijmbs.ijmbs_76_18
Clinical Vignette

Filamentous rods in the cerebrospinal fluid of a child with ventriculoperitoneal shunt: “Separation Anxiety” at the microscopic level!

Kaila Buckley
1   Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Nationwide Children's Hospital and The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
,
Alex Feldman
2   Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, Ohio
,
Samir Kahwash
3   Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, Ohio
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Certain bacteria and antibiotic combinations can result in unusual morphologic transformations such as the creation of septate filamentous bacterial rods, where division is preserved, but separation is inhibited. This is often seen when subinhibitory concentrations of antibiotics are administered. Herein, we describe this phenomenon in the case of a teenage boy with an infected ventriculoperitoneal shunt, whose culture-proven Pseudomonas aeruginosa took on a filamentous appearance following antibiotic treatment. This transformation is important to recognize, so it is not misconstrued as fungal hyphae, committing the patient to unnecessary treatment.

Key-words:

Antibiotic-mediated bacterial filamentation - filamentous rods - Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Financial support and sponsorship

Nil.




Publikationsverlauf

Eingereicht: 17. Oktober 2018

Angenommen: 06. Dezember 2018

Artikel online veröffentlicht:
07. Juli 2022

© 2019. The Libyan Authority of Scientific Research and Technologyand the Libyan Biotechnology Research Center. All rights reserved. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial-License,permitting copying and reproductionso long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, oradapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

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