GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Kids getting invasive group A strep — or iGAS — is a rarity, said the doctors at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital on Thursday. However, they’ve seen four cases in the last month when on average they see five cases a year.
“One of the reasons why this has kind of come up with some hospitals in Britain and also one of the children's hospitals in Colorado seem to notice an increased incidence in the number of group A strep, invasive group A strep infections,” said Dr. George Fogg during a Zoom news conference. “I would say that, again, these are pretty rare manifestations but they certainly do happen.”
The CDC announced in late December that it was investigating the increase in cases nationwide.
Dr. Fogg said the symptoms tend to include a sore throat or red throat. However, if the bacteria gets into the tissue it can cause neck pain or throat pain so severe that a patient can’t turn their neck. And, if it gets deeper into the tissue, then it can turn into a “flesh-eating bacteria” in which surgery is promptly needed.
“We have seen patients that have actually died of these conditions,” Dr. Fogg said. “As I said, they can actually progress very quickly. And then we've also had patients where they've gotten in [and] we've recognized things fairly quickly. But still, usually our hospitalization is not like a really short two-day thing. Often, like if they have Necrotizing Fasciitis they may need surgery. Then they have to recover from that.”
Dr. Fogg added that if a patient has gone into shock then they may have liver or kidney damage, which may cause that person to spend weeks in the hospital recovering.
Nevertheless, he said Strep Group A is treatable with amoxicillin. Even with the shortage, penicillin works too.
“There are also other options in the Cephalosporin class, like Keflex, and things like that are also not on shortage,” Dr. Fogg said. “So, physicians do actually have a lot of options to treat group A strep, even with this amoxicillin shortage that we're having nationally.”
