A Florida man almost lost his leg — and could have died — from a rare flesh-eating bacterial infection, which developed after he was bitten in the thigh during a family fight.
Donnie Adams, a 52-year-old from the Tampa suburb of Riverview, went to the emergency room in mid-February to treat a bump the size of a dollar coin on his upper left thigh.
He was sent home with a tetanus shot and antibiotics, but the injury got worse over the next few days, becoming red, swollen and painful to the touch.
His thigh “almost looked like an orange peel because of the swelling that was underneath it,” Dr. Fritz Brink, a wound care specialist at HCA Florida Healthcare who treated Adams, told NBC News on Friday.
Adams’ pain continued to worsen.
“By the third day, my leg was very sore. I couldn’t walk, it was very warm and very painful,” he told the NBC affiliate WLFA.
Brink said Adams told him that he sustained the bite while breaking up a family altercation.
“He pulled them off of each other and, in the process, he got bit,” Brink said.
The wound’s appearance matched Adams’ account, he added.
“When I saw him in the hospital, you could still see the bite marks on his thigh,” Brink said. “It made teeth marks. I was very convinced that he was telling a true story.”
He said he rushed Adams to the operating room at HCA Florida Northside Hospital in St. Petersburg on Feb. 19. Adams underwent a second surgery several days later, then was released from the hospital around the second week of March, he said.
Adams told WLFA he had confidence in his doctors and didn’t hesitate to go forward with their recommendations.
“They assessed my wound and it was very horrific,” he said. “It was unbelievable. But in my mind, I just had to get through whatever this was.”
Adams added that he was likely only a day or two from needing an amputation.
“If I would’ve waited and waited until the next day after our second visit, there was a chance I would’ve lost my leg,” he said.
Flesh-eating disease, or necrotizing fasciitis, is a life-threatening condition that can be caused by a variety of different strains of bacteria, including group A strep and other bacteria found in water, dirt or saliva.
The bacteria enter the body through a break in the skin, such as a cut, scrape, burn, insect bite or open wound. From there, it invades and kills the tissue under the skin that surrounds the muscles, nerves, fat and blood vessels. The bacteria spreads quickly, so an infection can develop within hours or a few days.
“More often than not, it’s a normal bacteria that lives on our skin and they utilized a weak point from an injury as an entryway,” Brink said.
The human mouth contains hundreds of different bacteria, but it’s rare for doctors to see patients with a human bite, let alone one that develops into a life-threatening infection, he added.
Brink said he usually sees a case of necrotizing fasciitis once a month or every other month.
His theory about Adams’ case is that he likely developed a nonserious infection that traveled deeper into his soft tissue until it reached his muscle and “was able to just take off.”
Brink estimated that he removed around 60% of the skin on the front of Adams’ left thigh to stop the infection from spreading. From there, he said, he used a vacuum device to close the wound, which healed in about three months.
“I do expect him to make a full recovery,” Brink said. “He’s still going to feel that scar tissue on his thigh for a while to come, but his skin has completely healed.”
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