Pasteurella canis sepsis with fatal outcome in the frail older: a case report

Abstract

Pasteurella canis typically causes wound infections following dog bites, while invasive infections are uncommon. Within invasive infections, bacteremia (the presence of bacteria in the bloodstream) must be differentiated from sepsis (the organ dysfunction caused by a dysregulated immunological response to infection). Sepsis and heart failure interact in a continuum where sepsis-induced cardiomyopathy is triggered by acute systemic inflammation, whereas preexisting heart failure increases susceptibility to sepsis and mortality. We present the case of an 87-year-old frail woman admitted with heart failure. Blood cultures taken after a febrile episode resulted positive for P. canis. Response to piperacillin/tazobactam was satisfactory, although the patient died from heart failure. She did not report a history of a dog bite; therefore, we speculated that P. canis spread through respiratory secretions of a dog known to the patient, causing pneumonia (documented at a computed tomography scan) followed by sepsis.