Foudroyant Course of an Extensive Clostridium septicum Gas Gangrene in a Diabetic Patient with Occult Carcinoma of the Colon

Copyright © 2013 Maximilian Hartel et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Background. Spontaneous gas gangrene is a rare disease in which Clostridium septicum frequently can be detected. After an incubation period of 5–48 hours, a very painful swelling is accompanied by a rapidly spreading toxic-infectious clinical picture ultimately leading to septic shock and multiple organ failure. We present a case of a completely documented rare infectious disease with triage findings including initial vital signs, initial medical findings, and the emergency lab., radiological, intraoperative, histopathological, microbiological, and postmortem results. After initial diagnosis of the underlying disease, the patient has been immediately transferred to the operating theatre. The laboratory findings reflect the devastating effect of toxi