Severe soft tissue infection, presumed related to rental wetsuit

[doctormike]

True. Still, wouldn't you think that a soap and water soak after use would keep the counts down and reduce the likelihood of this?

Oh, yeah, I would certainly hope that those dive ops that rent suits would do SOMETHING between customers... but then again, maybe most people just assume that, and it's not really done. Yuk!

Perhaps customers should be warned to do some sort of pre-soak after renting but before using. Not sure what would be the best for that? I use Steramine to sterilize my rebreather loop at intervals. Food grade (used in restaurants on pots and pans), and easy to mix up a dilute solution. Might be better than soap.

Sounds like a good research study, actually. Pretty easy to do, we would just need a few squares of neoprene and some culture material.

 

[Duke Dive Medicine]

Star San would probably work. I use it for sanitizing brewing equipment and bottles. Homebrew Sanitizer - StarSan - Sanitizer for Beer and Wine Equipment - Northern Brewer

 

[cburgert]

I've always been a germaphobe, so I always used my own wetsuit, except for the days I took my certification dives. Now I own all my own gear. Don't know if you can get bacteria from a regulator, but I wouldn't risk it.

 

[tech_diver]

I had it happen to me years ago. I had been diving at a local lake in my drysuit without an undergarment and came home with a pimple on my lower hip and within a day or so it became a large puss infection. It never got larger than an inch and a half across but I was feverish and sick. After it drained, it looked like a deep bullet hole. I was fortunate I got treatment early.


Since that incident, my buddies blamed the lake I was diving in. Lake Lanier near Atlanta sees quite a few divers and people swim there all the time. I had never heard anything but anecdotal stories of people getting sick from being exposed to the water. I didn't want to give up a fun, local dive site so I sterilized my drysuit shell and kept diving there. Never had another such incident.

I still wondered if the lake had anything to do with it.

 

[Dogbowl]

I was surprised to be offered a “solution” bath for my wetsuit in a dive shop in mahahual. They told me to go on back and soak my wetsuit but I hesitated. I don’t like to soak my suit where everybody else’s has been. After seeing my hesitation, the shop owner pulled out a giant bottle of wetsuit disinfectant solution and proudly showed it to me. He told me don’t worry, it will disinfect AND make my suit smell nice!

So some shops will thoroughly clean their suits beyond the general dip in fresh water.

 

[abnfrog]

this is the exact reason at our facility we soak the rental wetsuits (and regs ) in 12 % virkon solution then "sink the stink " and dry them out for multiple days ..... all you need is that kind of a problem for your reputation

 

[Nic.]

So please excuse my ignorance, I'm no infection expert. Could the previous person wearing the wetsuit had to have an active MRSA infection for it to be transmitted to the OP?
It was mentioned that some people carry MRSA in their body, but it does no harm to them. Does it work that way with skin? Could the previous wearer have been a "carrier" and not known they had something that could be transmitted?

 

[doctormike]

No idea. Probably some combination of the bacterial profile and the host. This is why it's not clear how presumably healthy people get necrotizing fasciitis...

MRSA isn't like anthrax or plague, where it spreads easily through casual contact or the air. And many of us are probably carrying some level of MRSA colonies right now. Infections take the right combination of factors. Maybe here there were pre-existing portals of entry (like an area of skin breakdown), prolonged wet contact (like with a tight fitting wetsuit on skin), etc...

Without knowing a lot about the specific case, it's hard to be precise.

 

[uncfnp]

So please excuse my ignorance, I'm no infection expert. Could the previous person wearing the wetsuit had to have an active MRSA infection for it to be transmitted to the OP?
It was mentioned that some people carry MRSA in their body, but it does no harm to them. Does it work that way with skin? Could the previous wearer have been a "carrier" and not known they had something that could be transmitted?

MRSA lives on the skin but has a special affinity for the nose, axilla and groin. It is possible for a carrier without an active infection to transmit the bacteria. But even if you are exposed, as doctormike said, it doesn’t mean you will get an active infection.

 

[2airishuman]

The main lesson that I take from this story is that it's important to seek treatment early for unexplained skin problems.

It would be speculation (albeit justified speculation given the facts) that the wetsuit was in fact the source of the infection.

I agree with DDM that there are all kinds of measures short of "sterilizing" a wetsuit to reduce the incidence of transmission of infection, and yes, soap and water go a long way. Mild solutions of any number of bactericidal compounds would also help. A question to ponder is what the best thing to use might be given cost, effectiveness, ease of use, worldwide availability, materials compatibility, etc. I would not necessarily be confident that anything packaged and sold as a "wetsuit sanitizer" would be the best answer.