Did bad leftovers lead to a New England teen losing his legs? That's ridiculous, doctors say [View all]

[Nevilledog]

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Gal Tziperman Lotan
@tzigal
You may have seen a viral story last week about a teenager who ate some lo mein leftovers and ended up in the hospital with multiple amputations.

But did the leftovers make him sick?

The short answer is no. The long answer is absolutely not.

bostonglobe.com
Did bad leftovers lead to a New England teen losing his legs? That’s ridiculous, doctors say. - The...
The teen's meal of leftover chicken, rice, and noodles from a restaurant was "irrelevant" to his severe illness, said the doctor who edited the journal article behind the viral story. “It was...
6:48 AM · Feb 28, 2022

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/02/27/metro/did-bad-leftovers-lead-new-england-teen-losing-his-legs-thats-ridiculous-doctors-say/

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The horrific viral story went like this: A 19-year-old New England man ate some bad leftovers — chicken, rice, and noodles from a restaurant meal — and ended up in the hospital for nearly a month, fighting for his life and undergoing multiple amputations because of meningococcal disease.

The Massachusetts General Hospital case was the subject of a 2021 New England Journal of Medicine case challenge, in which doctors describe an unusual, sometimes perplexing case for readers, who then try to discern a diagnosis.

In this case, the authors described a young man who had eaten leftovers 20 hours before being hospitalized. He was vomiting, with aches and pains, neck stiffness, and purple splotches all over his body, among other symptoms. He later went into severe septic shock and developed necrosis, the mass death of cells, when blood clots meant oxygen was unable to reach his extremities.

Over the course of his hospital stay, his medical team amputated both his legs below the knees and parts of all 10 fingers.

The case gained attention again recently after YouTuber Bernard Hsu, who makes videos about medical cases under the username Chubbyemu, posted a re-creation of the story last week, discussing at length something doctors only mentioned in passing: the leftovers the patient had eaten. As of Friday, the video had more than 1.4 million views. Media outlets, from USA Today to People Magazine and the New York Post, picked up the case too, running with headlines that suggested his meal may have lead to the amputations.

*snip*