Fecal Transplant Scheduled

[Ageekygal 38]

It's been done in veterinary medicine for as many years as I can remember. It's not necessarily done the same way as it is in humans but it works great

[Kindle 8,667]

I know...I'm a vet tech and have done them before. Also done rumen transfaunation, so the procedure seemed quite logical and normal to me

And today is two weeks off antibiotics and so far so good.....!

[Ageekygal 38]

Ah, no wonder you were so willing and not turned off by it! Veterinary medicine is often ahead of human medicine as we are willing to try things with animals that may not seem to palatable to people. Our long term success is then transferred as if its a new technique.

I actually injected stem cells taken from my own dogs fat into her knee over 7 years ago with good success and am hoping it will eventually be offered as a treatment for humans and accepted by insurance.

Keep up the good health

[cstewart 17]

I am a director of surgery and we have done this procedure multiple times. It's very successful. You need a donor who does not live with you. Typically housemates share the same flora. You blend it in a blender and place it at various levels of the colon. It's very effective.

[lulugirl 20]

This was an interesting post.. I had my sleeve surgery July 2012 in Mexico & got C Diff. My doctor said he couldn't say if I got in Mexico so I am still happy with my surgery!

It took 4 months & 2 hospitalizations to get rid of this! I ended up in a research study where they gave me an infusion, not sure if I got the actual medicine but was told if I didn't get better, a fecal transplant would be next!

My insurance took care of all costs associated with this!

Please post an update on this! hope you feel better soon!

[lsereno 2,525]

Mary Roach writes about the procedure in detail in her book, Gulp. I really enjoyed the book. Not for the squeamish.

Lynda

[marysminute 20]

I think on this American life, it was they had someone on there talking about it. Very interesting! Cures a bunch of stuff. I think some docs think it may cure obesity ...

[marysminute 20]

It was freakanomics http://freakonomics.com/2011/03/04/freakonomics-radio-the-power-of-poop/

[lsereno 2,525]

Yes, I did see an article recently about gut bacteria and obesity. I think there is a link somewhere here on bariatric pal, but I don't remember where.

Here's one article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/health/gut-bacteria-from-thin-humans-can-slim-mice-down.html?_r=0

[Kindle 8,667]

This was an interesting post.. I had my sleeve surgery July 2012 in Mexico & got C Diff. My doctor said he couldn't say if I got in Mexico so I am still happy with my surgery!

It took 4 months & 2 hospitalizations to get rid of this! I ended up in a research study where they gave me an infusion, not sure if I got the actual medicine but was told if I didn't get better, a fecal transplant would be next!

My insurance took care of all costs associated with this!

Please post an update on this! hope you feel better soon!

Glad you finally got your infection cleared up. I actually passed on a research study because there was a 33% chance I would get the placebo and I wouldn't have been allowed to do a fecal transplant for at least 3 months if I wasn't cured with their infusion. Insurance would have paid to keep me on antibiotics, and I actually would have gotten a couple hundred dollars stipend from the research study. But I was all about the cure, so I forked out the cash and got new poo. Almost 4 weeks out from stopping vancomycin and so far so good!

BTW, both the infectious disease doctor and gastroenterologist think I probably got the C. diff from being on clindamycin for my tooth, not from going to Mexico. I talked to the doctors at OCC in TJ and they had not received any other reports of C. diff from patients that were there.

[rhw94123 115]

Very interesting – just chiming in to say that I got C-diff from clindamycin for a tooth a few years before getting sleeved. Suffered with the c-diff for a couple of months and then a doctor prescribed an antibiotic for me that (TM I) turned my pooh white for a couple of days and then I was back to normal.

[freezepop 13]

Yes, you read it right! Here's a little background.... I was sleeved on 12/20 everything went great. Then I got a tooth root abscess one week postop and my dentist put me on 10 days of clindamycin. I normally would have passed on the antibiotics and taken a more cautious approach, but we both agreed the possibility of the bacteria from the tooth root traveling to my new stomach incision and setting up an abscess was just too much of a risk.

5 weeks post op I developed bad diarrhea. Based on the recent antibiotic regimen, My PCP immediately suspected Clostridial difficile infection, but the test was negative. Put me on a week of metronidazole until the diarrhea cleared. After another recurrence of diarrhea a week later, resulting in severe dehydrating requiring IV fluids, my doc ran a bunch of tests and this time the C. Diff came back positive. Two weeks on metronidazole (which, by the way made me very sick) cleared the diarrhea. But 8 days later, more diarrhea, more metronidazole, more IV fluids and a trip to a gastroenterologist and infectious disease specialist. The gastro switched me to vancomycin which fortunately, did not make me sick like the metronidazole. The infectious disease doc said they see 10 new cases of C. Diff every week and the are currently doing a study on a new treatment. I decided to give the vancomycin a try and declined the trial study, because what good would it do if I ended up in the control group and only got the placebo.

So 8 days after finishing the vanco, the diarrhea came back AGAIN. The gastro is now suggesting a fecal transplant. Even though it's considered "experimental" and insurance won't pay for it, He's seen a 90% cure rate with it. So I recruited a donor (my PCP actually volunteered his wife ) and she has to go through a huge stool and blood screening protocol to make sure she can't give me anything (HIV, syphilis, H. Pylori, giardia, etc.) and next Thursday her poo will become my poo! We will have our own special meaning of BFF (best fecal friends).

This isn't exactly a direct VSG complication, but having GI surgery, being on PPI's, and being on antibiotics are all risk factors that probably contributed. Not too mention having a teeny sleeve prevented me from being able to hydrate properly which resulted in having to get IV fluids 3 times. Anyways, I'll keep you posted on my ground-breaking procedure!

I hope everything worked out for you ...ive caught c diff about 3-4 different times in 3 years..im a CNA ..I would OD on Probiotics and it would clear up in a few days..i can c how antibiotics could make it harder to get rid of it and actually encourage growth ..

[boccob81 244]

Glad every thing is coming along nicely . How many weeks are you after the poo transfer ?

[Kindle 8,667]

Freeze pop, oh, believe me, I took a LOT of Probiotics (34 different strains, 100 billion CFU/day plus Saccharomyces boulardii) before, during and after the other treatments. Still didn't work. And no, the metronidazole and vancomycin do not encourage growth of the C. diff, they do kill it (that's why the diarrhea would resolve while I was taking them) but they also kill everything else. After stopping the antibiotics it was like a race to see what would come back first...the C. diff or the good bugs. Despite all the probiotics, the C. diff always won.

I am a vet tech, and animals get C. diff as well. Considering my exposure, I've probably been an asymptomatic carrier for years. I can't remember the last time I ever antibiotics, so the Clindamycin likely just tipped my flora balance just enough for the C. diff to proliferate. We treat dogs and cats with metronidazole. We treat horses with probiotics (particularly Saccharomyces boulardii) and sometimes fecal transplants. Foals usually die before we can even treat. Calves will drop dead within a day if they get an infection. This is such an issue, there is a vaccine for cows and goats that protects against 8 different Clostridial strains, and Merck is currently doing studies to try and develop a similar vaccine for people. It's not the Clostridial bug itself that does the damage, it's the toxins they release and that's what the vaccine protects against.

As for my transplant, it worked fabulous. My diarrhea cleared up immediately and never came back. That was 3 months ago.