Eating a piece of cool watermelon may be a good way to quench summer thirst, but having a spoiled one could be life-threatening for dialysis patients, a nephrologist said yesterday.
Taichung Tzu Chi Hospital’s Division of Nephrology director Chen Yi-shin (陳一心) said a 47-year-old Taichung woman surnamed Lin (林), who has been on peritoneal dialysis for six years, recently lapsed into critical condition after eating watermelon that had gone bad.
“Lin sought emergency care at the hospital after suffering from fever and severe abdominal pain. A bacteria culture found that she had been infected with E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus,” Chen said.
Chen said the woman told him she ate a piece of watermelon two days before that had seemed off.
“I thought the fruit would only give me diarrhea or something like that. I had never expected such a serious bacterial infection,” Chen quoted Lin as saying.
Chen said a 33-year-old male patient surnamed Wang (王), who has been undergoing dialysis for five years, suffered a similar occurrence recently when he experienced abnormal abdominal pain following a meal at a sushi restaurant.
“We found that Wang’s peritoneal fluid had become cloudy, one of the common symptoms of peritonitis — a potentially fatal inflammation of a thin layer of tissue inside the abdomen,” Chen said, adding that it took an entire month of intensive treatments to bring the man back to health.
Chen said that E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus are common causes of food poisoning and that healthy people would get diarrhea or enteritis at most.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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