Baby Fights to Survive Bacteria

An 11-month-old Oxnard girl fought for life in a Northridge pediatric intensive care unit Tuesday, her body ravaged by flesh-eating bacteria.

After removing strips of dead tissue from her chest and back, surgeons began grafting cadaver skin on her Tuesday afternoon in hopes of staving off deadly infection.

“This child has lost 20% of her skin,” said plastic surgeon Stephen Bresnick of Northridge Hospital Medical Center. “She’s lost muscle. She’s lost fat. Her ribs are exposed.”

The girl, identified only as Baby Rosa, remained on life support and massive doses of antibiotics Tuesday. She was in critical condition but is improving, although doctors said only about half of patients with such severe cases of flesh-eating bacteria survive.

Doctors remain mystified about how Rosa caught the disease, but believe it sprang from a simple staph infection--Staphylococcus aureus, the same bacteria that causes boils and other relatively harmless skin conditions.

Baby Rosa’s parents, who have asked not to be identified, first noticed something wrong June 30, when Rosa broke out with a mild fever. Rosa’s mother took her to an Oxnard physician, who took a throat culture and sent the girl home, said Dr. Hooshang Semnani, head of pediatric critical care at Northridge Hospital.

On Wednesday, her mother drove Rosa to Mexico to visit a family doctor in Tijuana. After spotting a bright red rash on Rosa’s back, the physician told her mother to immediately drive back to Los Angeles and check her into a hospital, Semnani said.

If she survives, Baby Rosa faces more surgery and will be left with a significant deformity, Bresnick said.