Your Patient Was Admitted for a Gunshot Wound About a Week

Multiple Choice

Your patient was admitted for a gunshot wound about a week ago.As a precautionary activity,the doctor placed her on antibiotics for a few days while recuperating.Blood specimens are drawn on the patient a couple of times a day,every day,and sent down to the microbiology lab for analysis of bacteria.Nothing has grown in culture.After her 4th day in the hospital--no fever,no infection identified--one set of blood specimens has been reported positive for a bacterium.The culture was identified by the lab as Staphylococcus epidermidis,a common organism on the skin.Predict the likely situation leading to this.

A) The patient is immunodepressed and very susceptible to bacterial infection.
B) The seemingly nonpathogen Staphylococcus epidermidis has converted from a nonpathogen to a pathogen because of the antibiotics that the patient has taken.
C) The Staphylococcus epidermidis is most likely just a skin contaminant that ended up in the blood specimen taken from the patient,as a result of bad aseptic technique during the venipuncture.
D) Staphylococcus epidermidis is a very slow growing bacterium and was probably in the blood right after the gunshot wound,but failed to grow until now.