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Case Report | Open Access
Empyema Caused by Clostridium bifermentans: A Case Report
Safa Edagiz,1 Phil Lagace-Wiens,1,2 John Embil,3 James Karlowsky,1,2 and Andrew Walkty
1,2,31Department of Medical Microbiology, University of Manitoba, Canada
2Diagnostic Services Manitoba, Canada
3Department of Internal Medicine, Section of Infectious Diseases, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Abstract
A case of pneumonia with associated empyema caused by Clostridium bifermentans is described. C bifermentans is an anaerobic, spore-forming, Gram-positive bacillus. This organism is infrequently reported as a cause of infection in humans, and older publications tended to regard it as nonpathogenic. However, in more recent reports, C bifermentans has been documented as a cause of septic arthritis, osteomyelitis, soft tissue infection, abdominal infections, brain abscess, bacteremia and endocarditis. The present case is the third reported case of empyema caused by C bifermentans, and it serves to further define the spectrum of illness due to this uncommon organism.
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 Hindawi Publishing Corporation. 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.
