Inadequate Rabies Treatment Consequences & Rh Blood Incompatibility During Pregnancy

Date: August 22, 2017

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Rabies exposure can be deadly. Be prepared to treat your patients with HyperRAB® S/D, manufactured by Grifols. According to Rabies Watch, "recognizing a rabies virus exposure in a person infected by an animal and then intervening in a timely way can be challenging." Recent cases have demonstrated that when rabies virus exposures are not recognized as urgent, life-threatening situations, fatalities will occur.

Let's examine a few cases in which rabies virus exposures were inadequately handled, with tragic consequences.

Case 1

Location: Philippines, March 2017

Patient: 7 year-old-boy

Exposure: Dog bite to the head

Subsequent Events: Child received three doses of only a rabies vaccine two weeks after the incident.

Outcome: The child died.

Case 2

Location: Wyoming, October 2015

Patient: 77-year-old woman

Exposure: Contact with a bat in her home. She exhibited no bite marks.

Subsequent Events: She did not seek medical attention until hospitalization one month after the incident. She presented with progressive weakness and ataxia. After more than a week of hospitalization and deterioration , which included dysphagia, confusion, dyspnea with endotracheal intubation for worsening respiratory failure, near complete quadriplegia and eventually coma, she was evaluated for rabies on the basis of family members who recalled the bat exposure.

Outcome: She died three days later.

Case 3

Location: Maryland, February 2013

Patient: 49-year-old man

Exposure: Received deceased-donor kidney transplant 17 months before onset of symptoms.

Subsequent Events: Patient presented at the emergency room with right hip pain and was given a diagnosis of sciatica and discharged. Four days later, patient returned with complaints of fever, nausea, and lower extremity weakness. He had received a kidney transplant from a donor who's cause of death was severe gastroenteritis from raw fish consumption. Rabies virus isolated from banked samples from donor were more than 99.9% identical to the rabies virus from kidney recipient.

Outcome: The patient died.

To learn more about HyperRAB S/D, please read the prescribing information.

HyperRAB S/D is VIPc and 340B eligible, and is available for immediate shipment.

What is maternal-fetal Rho(D) blood type incompatibility? According to Hyperimmunes.com, this "occurs when the mother is Rh negative and the father is Rh positive, potentially creating an Rh-positive baby."

During the first pregnancy, the mother's body may not have developed the antibodies to her fetus' Rh-positive blood, so the risk to her first baby is only slight. However, subsequent pregnancies carry an increased risk because her body has built up immunity, which creates a greater risk for hemolytic disease of the newborn (HDN).

The mother must receive Rho(D) immune globulin treatment in a timely manner so that she does not become sensitized, which would put the subsequent babies at risk for hemolytic anemia.

Optimize prevention and minimize the risk of HDN with HyperRHO® S/D, manufactured by Grifols.

To learn more about HyperRHO S/D, please read the prescribing information.

HyperRHO S/D is VIPc and 340B eligible, and is available for immediate shipment.

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