Infant Child's Mystery Illness Causes Concern | Diagnosis Unknown | Real Responders

in Cleveland Ohio a strange outbreak that strikes infants it is a mother's worst fear newborns pour into a pediatric intensive care unit their lungs damaged and bleeding doctors search desperately for the cause as the babies begin to die the quest to save young lives becomes a race to find a killer [Music] some of the names in this program have been changed Cleveland Ohio November 1994 it started with the call to the paramedics a father dialed 911 newborn baby was spitting up blood [Music] bullets in the ambulance the paramedics found that three-month-old Derek Roberts lungs were bleeding so heavily he was having difficulty breathing they worked hard to keep his Airways clear as they rushed to the hospital they put him on IV fluids to combat his extensive blood loss they did everything they could for him but when Derrick arrived at rainbow babies & Children's Hospital he was barely alive dr. door Dearborn was the respiratory specialist called in to consult on the case when he heard about the infant severe condition he feared the worst [Music] when a child comes in you think to the emergency room with bleeding coming out of the nose and/or mouth coughing blood this is a very frightening process because we know this is gonna be life-threatening the baby's lungs were still filling of blood his father Alvin Roberts was devastated he had no idea how his newborn son had become so desperately ill so you were home when this happened yes words has he been checking off no sir so tell me what happens and he ever talked to us before we had that this is really quite serious come over here let me show you this young Derrick had lost a lot of blood a look at Derek's x-rays confirm to dr. Dearborn that he had a potentially deadly condition that's because there's probably blood and we're gonna give him a blood transfusion the doctor ordered transfusions to keep the infant from growing any weaker Derek was still struggling to breathe the infant's being in such severe respiratory status cannot breathe adequately for themselves they're in a state of what would call respiratory failure and we have to breathe for them little Derek was put on a ventilator to help him breathe and sent to the pediatric intensive care unit dr. Dearborn looked to the lab results to find the source of the dangerous symptoms there are a number of things that can cause bleeding in the lungs such as trauma such as a very severe infection one has to sort out that the bleeding is actually coming from the lungs Dearborn and his colleague pediatrician Paul Smith were mystified Derek had no previous history of respiratory disorders like bronchitis or allergies there was no family history of lung disease test results showed that the baby's lungs had been bleeding for several days but they had no idea why in the process of trying to sort out what was going on with him we put him through all the testing we could imagine that might come up with other causes for what was going on with this infant and we found no other causes while Dearborn was searching for some clue to Derek's condition another worried parent was bringing her child to the emergency room with symptoms just as dangerous like little Derek young Robert was brought to the ER when his mother found he was spitting up blood the danger that we need to assess quickly is to how severe it is the more severe cases if they don't make it to our emergency room quickly they can die Dearborn requested chest x-rays along with blood and urine samples doctors told Robert's mother his prognosis wasn't good I was very scared I was praying for him I was crying I said just pacing walking back and forth where I Wis along with my son is he gonna be okay the paramedics quick work had helped stabilize the boy's heartbeat but the bleeding in his lungs continued doctors administered steroids to reduce the inflammation and swelling in his lungs and continued suctioning blood to keep his Airways open Robert was admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit and placed on a ventilator it was three to five days that they required the mechanical ventilation and then once they were stabilized off of the ventilator for a day or so in the intensive care unit they would be transferred up to the regular floor the infant's eventually got better and were sent home but later that month at an outpatient clinic associated with the Children's Hospital dr. Dearborn learned of three more cases in a single day all were infants that had been rushed to the hospital over the preceding months with similar conditions now improved they were coming back for routine checkups but no one had put the cases together typically doctors at the hospital saw at most one case like this a year it was frightening because it meant that we were having a major problem of a life-threatening problem with infants and somehow we had to start thinking about how we were gonna have to get ahead of this the cleveland hospital treats tens of thousands of children every year with over 100 pediatric specialists dr. Dearborn wondered if more doctors could be seeing the same condition without realizing the extent of the problem he scoured hospital records until he found two more babies that had come in with blood in their lungs [Music] one case confirmed his worst fears six months earlier a baby boy had been rushed to the hospital with severe pulmonary bleeding [Music] one of the infants was bleeding so heavily on the ventilator that he in essence drowned in his own blood doctors were unable to find the cause of the bleeding Dearborn had no idea what was triggering these illnesses but he knew he had to find out quickly before more babies died [Music] Dearborn requested samples from all the children with similar symptoms in the lab technicians analyzed the infant's lung tissue in all six cases testing indicated the infants had suffered pulmonary hemorrhaging something had caused blood vessels in the baby's lungs to rupture Dearborn discussed the findings with pediatric intensive care specialist dr. Paul Smith Smith speculated that the babies had come in contact with airborne toxins of some kind in the literature frequently there are children that are described at exposed to pesticides carpet cleaner other things in the environment such as smoke inhaled poisons Dearborn reviewed the infant's charts once again looking for clues some common link that all the children shared I started to look at the addresses or these infants are coming from translated their addresses into census tracts and then plotted those census tracts mr. corps they live the census maps held one startling piece of evidence all of the babies lived in the same extended area inner-city neighborhoods within six miles of the hospital my first thought was well is there something in the local environment are we dealing with a Love Canal situation are we dealing with an environmental contamination dr. Dearborn needed help he contacted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention environmental epidemiologist dr. Ruth Edsel arrived in Cleveland later that day I know medical detective CDC calls on me when there's an epidemic of a disease that they can't understand and that they'd like to try to get to the bottom of my job is to go out and try to solve the mystery Edsel and a team of health officials interviewed the children's parents they were looking for anything the families had in common soon they had several clues all of the babies lived with cigarette smokers all were fed formula and all lived in houses recently damaged by water but none of these factors could explain such a severe condition since we did not know what we were dealing with I look and it seemed to be in the home we put together a very wide net we put together anything we could think of that these infants might be exposed to in the home from the water to therefore how the formula was made up to to the medications that might be in the home and things like this investigators met to pour over the information hoping to uncover some key clue that would point them to the source of the illness but the problem continued as they searched more and more children were falling ill Carol Jamison was getting ready for work one December morning when her infant son Andrew began spitting up blood she rushed him to nearby rainbow babies & Children's Hospital [Music] as the ER staff hustled Andrew into the exam room Carol frantically explained his condition on the surface Andrew didn't seem to ill the ER doctor checked his airway for any obstructions it appeared to be clear [Music] he ordered a battery of tests including chest x-rays to see if the problem was in the infant's lungs and page dr. Dearborn the doctor was very concerned that he might be facing yet another child with life-threatening bleeding in the lungs the baby was no longer spitting up blood but that didn't necessarily mean the bleeding had stopped [Music] [Music] Andrews x-rays showed his lungs were inflamed he was now the tenth confirmed case of this rare and deadly disorder [Music] his breathing soon became more labored doctors pumped oxygen into Andrews lungs but his condition was quickly deteriorating dr. Dearborn explained to the baby's mother Carol what they were going to do to help Andrew breathe we're gonna have to put a breathing tube down into his trachea we're gonna do that initially here no intensive care unit while we can watch him more carefully and for a longer period of time little Andrew was clinging to life but it was only the mechanical ventilator that was keeping him alive one month after the outbreak began health officials had no idea what was causing the infants in Cleveland to become so desperately ill for now all they could do was hope Andrews tiny body could fight off this sudden and mysterious illness something terrible was causing a life-threatening illness in the children living in Cleveland a series of healthy infants from area inner-city neighborhoods had all developed bleeding lungs one child did not survive two others were still in critical condition and more were falling ill each day cleveland pediatricians joined forces with state and local health officials and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to find out why they launched a case-control study to compare healthy infants and sick infants from the same neighborhoods the list of possibilities was extensive but the results were not they needed more information investigators were dispatched to the homes of the babies who had suffered from the bleeding lungs they found that the infants neighborhoods were in an older section of Cleveland with some houses in poor condition investigators checked their homes for hazardous cleaners paints pesticides anything that might have triggered the illness they used alcohol wipes to gather residue from areas where pesticides are usually applied [Music] they focus their efforts on the baby's rooms because infants lungs are still developing they are fragile and more sensitive investigators thought they might be inhaling something that wouldn't normally affect adults they used a tiny high-tech vacuum to collect dust particles that might have caused the babies to have an allergic reaction the particles were tested for common allergens caused by pets insects or dust in all they tested the homes for over a dozen different types of chemicals and allergens [Music] every patient from the neighborhood who came into the hospital with respiratory problems was examined for bleeding lungs or any other similar symptoms we were having multiple cases like this in our inner-city community that was very frightening because we didn't know how deep the iceberg was but we just seen the top of it where we just seen the few cases that were severe and were there other cases out there that were much more subtle that if they got ill in some certain way or had some sort of other trigger that pushed him over the edge they would sudden they believed in dying [Music] Dearborn hoped that the tests on the pesticide and dust samples from the homes would give them a lead but they did not in fact so far the intensive investigation had turned up nothing when the test results came in we saw that they were not high enough nor if prevalent enough in the can the case homes to be a meaningful explanation dr. Ruth Etzel of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had been trying to find some kind of lead then a clue turned up from a most unlikely source after talking with a colleague Etzel learned that certain animals had suffered a similar condition as the infants when ingesting a mold called stachybotrys I realized that if animals bleed from the gastrointestinal tract when they eat moldy grain why could an infant's bleed from the lungs when they breathe into the spores of a mold called Stachybotrys it seemed like a long shot most molds are harmless microscopic organisms found almost everywhere indoors and out stachybotrys is a toxic mold often found in homes that have suffered water damage it appears as a dark olive gray slimy mass with either a smooth or rigid surface when investigators remembered that all the sick children had lived in homes with recent water damage their long shot became a working hypothesis they decided to test the children's homes for stachybotrys spores we went back to the original families and asked them if we could come to their home to measure molds in the air and on the services they did a visual inspection of the baby's rooms looking for mold none was found next they went to the basements the most common location for mold any moist environment is a perfect breeding ground for mold many building materials provide nutrients for mold to grow including paper products ceiling tiles and wood the investigators did find several patches of a slimy green black mold they wondered if it could be stachybotrys although they hadn't seen any mold in the baby's bedrooms public health officials also decided to collect air samples looking for airborne spores they set up special pumps containing filter cassettes to trap the particles investigators were on a promising track but it would take time for the labs to run the tests time to see if the infants had in fact encountered the stachybotrys mold and as the clock ticked more sick babies were pouring in to Cleveland's hospitals a dozen infants in Cleveland had contracted a strange illness that caused their lungs to bleed now the CDC was on the case with local state and federal health officials to find the cause before more babies died they thought the outbreak might be linked to a mold called stachybotrys officials had rushed samples from the infants homes to the lab for testing scientists incubated the spores in a moist humid environment ideal growing conditions for mold in a few days the mold grew scientists examined the first samples carefully for clues there were several things that were remarkable about the laboratory findings first we found that the homes of all the babies with lung bleeding had far more varieties of mold growing then did the homes of the babies without long bleeding more significantly stachybotrys was found in the homes of the babies with bleeding lungs if stachybotrys seemed like a likely suspect one characteristic puzzled scientists this mold is normally slimy and moist and not airborne they wondered if the babies could have inhaled it and how determined to get to the root of this outbreak investigators in Cleveland went back to the houses of the sick children hoping to find answers in the basements they discovered several patches of mould that appeared to be a dried form of stachybotrys investigators believe the spores were being drawn in by basement furnaces and pulled through the ductwork into every room of the house the theory made even more sense when something startling happened [Music] half the infant's cured at the hospital came back bleeding again after returning home when Alvin Roberts brought his son Derek back to the hospital physicians discovered that Derek had a twin sister named Diana although the infants shared the same environment diana hadn't suffered from the same symptoms but Dearborne worried that while diana appeared healthy her life might in fact be in danger he asked to examine her using a bronchoscope the doctor looked into the baby girl's Airways they appeared to be functioning normally he inserted a tube to look for any signs of blood [Music] Dianna's lungs had been bleeding probably for some time though not as severely as her brothers it was fortunate that we've detected her low-grade bleeding problems so we can protect her from having more severe bleeding or she could have been coughing blood and really having a major life-threatening situation if even a seemingly healthy girl could have been affected the condition might be much more widespread than anyone had guessed dr. Dearborn had the coroner examined infant death certificates dating back three years focusing on children whose cause of death was listed as sudden infant death syndrome scientists re-examined lung tissue from over 102 seized children and found that six had bleeding lungs which may have led to their deaths all six came from the same neighborhoods as the more recent cases this meant to us that there had been cases that we had missed as had been our fear and that we were dealing predominantly with a geographic location Andrew Jameson slowly began to recover from his life-threatening illness when his mother Carol brought him in for his checkups dr. Dearborn had good news and bad news little Andrew would eventually make a full recovery but as a precaution she needed to move out of their mold infested home most of the families had been through a very frightening process they had almost lost their info and they weren't gonna take any risks and so they all very readily found a new home environment with relatives to start out with and most of them were in rental situations and they moved to two new rental homes that we inspected and made sure were clean before they moved into them the evidence all seemed to point toward mold as the most probable cause health officials launched a public information campaign about the potential dangers associated with stachybotrys a rare fungus found around standing water and paper or wood was found in the homes of sick babies if you have any standing water in your home such as you might find under your kitchen sink around leaky drain pipes you're advised to clean it up the culprit would become known as toxic mold and the campaign would have a profound effect on the community especially as the cases began to spread Letitia mckarrick was driving to the store when she realized her son Brian had a bloody nose then his cry turned into a choke gurgle frightened latisha knew her little boy needed immediate medical care she pulled off to a local business for help nearly two years after the first case appeared a whole new group of infants in Cleveland Ohio were about to experience sudden and dangerous bleeding fighting for their lives in 1996 doctors in Ohio were battling a deadly condition that had stricken more than a dozen infants the baby's lungs were bleeding an extremely rare disorder in young children investigators believe the condition was caused by a toxic mold that was growing in the patients homes leticia macaques infant son Brian had begun bleeding from his nose now he was having difficulty breathing the worried mother gave paramedics Brian's medical history she had no idea what could have caused this an ambulance rushed him to the Children's Hospital paramedics work quickly to suction blood from his lungs but Brian barely responded they rushed the baby into the emergency room where a doctor examined him Brian's condition was so critical he was immediately transferred to the pediatric intensive care unit in the middle of her panic latisha suddenly remembered a new story about stachybotrys she told the ER doctor she feared the mold might be the cause when I arrived at Rainbow I was still persistent on explaining that I had seen something about this on television and that there had to be somebody at this hospital that knew what I was talking about and they explained that dr. Dearborn was on his way down to the emergency room he had already heard that there was a baby coming up once Brian was stabilized dr. Dearborn performed a bronchoscopy the procedure confirmed Brian's lungs were full of blood Dearborn believed he could be dealing with another case of stachybotrys exposure dr. Dearborn came in and met with my husband and I and discussed the different things that were going on with Brian's immune system with what could be in our home health inspectors were dispatched to the macaques home if confirmed this would be one of the few cases outside of inner-city Cleveland a sign that the toxic mold was more widespread than investigators had thought health officials began their search in the basement they found traces of mold but they weren't sure it was the kind they were looking for they gathered samples to find out the results were surprising the original health inspection in her home came back negative surface samples negative air samples dr. Dearborn wondered if the infant had been exposed somewhere else my husband was bound and determined that there had to be a problem in the house that was the only place that my son had really been besides my parents house David McCarrick refused to give up his instincts told him to conduct his own inspection scouring every inch of the house so my husband was more persistent and ended up going into a cross base in our basement where I had some things in storage started going through books and boxes in finding this mold the macaques were right the family had the mold removed and after nearly a week in the hospital Brian's condition improved the family was ready to return home but they would have to wait after we were released from the hospital my children and I had to go and stay with my in-laws for I would say somewhere around a month while my husband worked on our house our basement and our our heating system and our cold air returns in the months that followed public health officials gradually brought the epidemic under control in Cleveland you started a Prevention Program where we would follow up the newborns going home to the geographic cluster area and the City Housing and County Housing and health departments would provide an expection of the home to see whether there was water damage where there was mold and where we found significant water damage involved we did what we could to remove the infants from that environment until it was taken care of investigators publish the results of their study in hopes of alerting other health officials to their findings we wanted to find out whether this was unique to Cleveland or whether or not it was occurring elsewhere the answer that came back was alarming their cases were indeed just the tip of the iceberg as 1998 was dawning more cases of pulmonary hemorrhaging and infants were turning up all over the country doctors wondered if stachybotrys could be affecting older children they soon found out over 800 miles away from Cleveland dr. J Portnoy an allergist at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City Missouri was treating toddler Brian Chubb for a severe asthma problem despite medication brian's asthma persisted the doctor tested Brian but he showed no reaction to molds dust or any other allergens a full physical exam revealed that Brian was an otherwise healthy toddler when I first saw Brian he had history of asthma he had a lot of respiratory problems a lot of wheezing and coughing and difficulty breathing and he was needing to be on a lot of medication in order to control those symptoms Brian's mother and father Laurie and Stephen chub heard about children having respiratory problems because of stachybotrys mold but Brian was older than the cases reported in Cleveland still Brian's parents wondered if there might be a connection between mold and their child's asthma they were concerned and Brian was suffering you hear the wheezing clear down into his lungs and getting up in the morning and eating breakfast he would have a I almost called it a smoker's cough a very dry hacking cough in the morning at the breakfast table almost every morning and it's just sad to listen to a very tiny child that is almost heaven trouble struggling to just take a breath dr. Portnoy requested Brian's family have an environmental assessment done of their home industrial hygienist Susan flappin was brought in to inspect the boy's home [Music] first she tested the air in the basement and right away the findings were clear and we found that there was talk about just in the air in the basement and that that counts the mold counts were high in the basement Brian's father Stephen chuck was amazed at the quantity of the mold spores when they started telling us that normal household has three to four thousand particles of mold and we were testing in our basement at twelve thousand particles it definitely draw our attention the mold was growing out of control but for Susan flappin and health officials nationwide the most alarming thing was that it was beginning to happen all across the country an outbreak of bleeding lungs threatened the lives of infants in Cleveland now a Kansas City doctor suspected stachybotrys mold was affecting the health of children there as well when industrial hygienist susan flappin was called into one sick boy's home she got high readings for airborne mold but she couldn't locate the source a lot of times there is hidden mold and so it can be you may see just a small patch of mold on the outside of the wall but when you get into it it could be a very large patch or it could be hidden underneath the carpet or in the ventilation system or at any number of places so this was something that we needed to investigate further an examiner took apart the wall where Susan believed the mold might be hiding the mold and the water was behind the wall of a finished part of the basement that you could not see lurking behind the finished walls of the chubbs basement was the toxic mold stachybotrys what you really need to do in those circumstances is try to physically remove the mold by cutting out the sheetrock or if you can remove the wood you need to remove it and replace it that's really the only solution if you can't physically remove it the best in the best you can do is just to scrub it off as best as you can and seal it up an environmental technician went to work removing it from the walls with a non-toxic cleaning agent and disinfecting the entire area once the cleanup was complete Susan returned to test the air in the house for stachybotrys mold particles the counts actually had gone from the 12,000 level to about 100 and so it had dramatically dropped six months after the house was cleared of mold the child's asthma symptoms also disappeared and it convinced me that there probably was an association between the exposure that he had in his home to the mold and the symptoms he was experiencing on the other side of town the mold was hitting even harder for the first time an entire family was experiencing chronic health problems twelve-year-old Amy McGuire struggled with recurring stomach pain and high fevers doctors could not find the cause of her illness for months her mother Julie was alarmed when everybody was so sick especially Amy I was very concerned and I was extremely frustrated because all I would hear from the doctors as well as some kind of virus it's some kind of virus we don't know what it is for the McGuire family a television news segment on stachybotrys mold offered a possible clue to their chronic illness the light bulb went on in my head and I really had a gut feeling that we were now dealing with mold definitely while watching the program they were called that a handyman remodeling the family's basement had removed an old shower and exposed a large section of wall covered with a slimy black mold the handyman had developed respiratory problems almost immediately and soon after the family did to Julie contacted the allergist interviewed in the news clip and set up an appointment I told her the story about our shower being remodeled that there had been mold behind it that two members of the family at least had been sick numerous times over just the past few months and she became very very interested in our story because of her experience susan flappin was called in to inspect the Maguire's basement although the family had cleaned the mold exposed by the shower sue suspected that there were traces left she took samples for testing we discovered that they also had some mold and because it was so close to the furnace that mole could be distributed to other parts of the house Susan also brought a nurse to take blood samples from the entire family she wanted to see if their blood contained traces of the stachybotrys toxins lab analysis of the basement samples showed that stachybotrys was in the Maguire's house to avoid further exposure the Maguire's had their home professionally cleaned with bleach and special filters to clean the air within weeks they began to recover analyzing the Maguire's blood samples Susan also found an interesting result she told us that every one of us had the antibodies in her blood our daughter Amy had the highest reading and then Steve had the the second-highest and then me and then our son Shawn and it really made a lot of sense because Amy was the sickest while toxic mold has always been around it is only recently that the full effects of mold are beginning to be understood from Texas to California to Florida there have been thousands of reported cases some reports say that up to 30% of US homes have a mold problem affecting as many as 26 million Americans and yet because the science of this mold is just in its infancy no one knows for sure exactly how many respiratory diseases can be directly linked to stachybotrys while our focus in Cleveland has predominantly been on the connection with young infants and their apparent vulnerability there has been of a beginning recognition that mold particularly toxic molds can be of health problems to older children in adults and here there's a fair amount of controversy because we really don't know exactly what the health effects are in light of growing concern over mold the CDC is currently working on a more complete study to further explore the connection between stachybotrys and a wide range of respiratory illnesses including asthma allergies and lung infections other research is underway to determine what levels of exposure to mold can be harmful dr. d'Or Dearborn believes that for now the best cure against any potentially toxic mold exposure is prevention it only makes sense that we take a prudent approach and don't live in MOLLE environments and the way we do that is when we have a water problem a plumbing leak a roof leak we'll clean it up on it within a day or two so that we don't get mold growth in Vincent Cleveland who recovered from the possible effects of toxic mold have grown up and are now breathing easier this entire experience changed everything on how I look at life and now I try and take the time to sit back and enjoy life and not always be in a hurry and not always take everything for granted quickly things that are very very important to you can be taken away from you in particular people that you love Natasha Carter is thankful for dr. Dearborn's help and her son Roberts recovery every time I move now I have to get my house check didn't make sure that is safe for my son for those public health officials who continue to study mold identifying stachybotrys as a possible threat is only the beginning the success of any individual scientific discovery is whether or not we've learned something about health that is gonna benefit the people and in fact here I believe we've learned something that's benefited hundreds of young infants throughout the country today across America doctors and patients alike are now alerted to the potentially deadly symptoms of stachybotrys mold while mold has always been in people's homes even the stachybotrys mold no one can say how widespread this could be and until scientists know more the battle against toxic mold will continue one home at a time [Music] [Music]

Channel: Real Responders

Views: 170,397

Keywords: Real Responders, air contamination, air quality concerns, bacterial infection, child health concerns, environmental hazards, fever management, health concerns, healthcare investigation, healthcare precautions, house mold, infection control measures, infectious agents, medical alert, medical emergency protocol, medical intervention, medical mystery, pandemic preparedness, unknown disease, virus prevention tips

Id: 4GYw5RobzdQ

Length: 48min 53sec (2933 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 28 2020