Last Updated

28 Dec 2002

Source: Washington Post, November 10, 2001.

Despite Odds, Anthrax Patients Go Home

Two D.C. Area Men Benefited From Treatment Advances, Specialist Says

By Avram Goldstein and Jennifer Lenhart, Washington Post Staff Writers

Two Washington area mail workers, hospitalized for nearly three weeks with inhalational anthrax, were sent home yesterday, fresh evidence that the disease is not the virtual death sentence medical experts had feared.

When the two unidentified men were released by Inova Fairfax Hospital and Winchester Medical Center, they didn't leave exactly as they might have liked.

The Fairfax patient joked that a limousine ride with a refreshing alcoholic beverage would be nice, but that didn't happen. At Winchester, the departing anthrax survivor wanted to walk out on his own but reluctantly submitted to hospital policy and rode out in a wheelchair.

By yesterday afternoon, both men were home, but doctors do not know whether they will be left with long-term physical limitations from the anthrax infections. One contracted the disease at the District's Brentwood Road mail processing center and the other at a State Department mail facility in Sterling.

Only weeks ago, the idea of recovering from an anthrax infection in the lungs and chest cavity was considered improbable at best. But advances in drug therapies and critical care changed that, one infectious disease specialist said.

The specialist, Naaz Fatteh, treated the Fairfax patient and said the 56-year-old man will immediately begin a program to recondition his lungs after weeks of inactivity. Until recently, she said, he could walk only as far as the nursing station on his floor. Before the man was infected, he was a healthy nonsmoker, she said.

Both men will be monitored closely with weekly exams and will continue taking oral antibiotics now that they no longer need to take them intravenously. Fatteh said she would order chest X-rays and CAT scans as needed to track the shrinkage of enlarged lymph nodes and other traces of infection in her patient's chest cavity and lungs.

If all goes well, she said, the Fairfax patient will be able to return to his Postal Service job in a month, but she declined to say whether he plans to go back.

Fatteh said the science of treating and preventing anthrax infections has evolved rapidly in the last month, when 10 cases of pulmonary anthrax were logged as a result of letters sent from New Jersey to targets in Florida, New York and Washington that contained anthrax spores. The last case of inhalational anthrax reported in the United States before this outbreak was in 1976.

Fatteh said she planned to publish a scientific article on the treatment of anthrax within a few weeks to share what she learned with doctors around the world.

"Somebody who [arrived] with a disease that was thought to be almost uniformly fatal went home today in pretty good shape," she said.

Two other postal employees have died of anthrax, and one other patient remains at the Fairfax Hospital in fair condition. Fatteh said doctors hope to discharge that man, Leroy Richmond, of Stafford County, within a few weeks.

The 59-year-old man released from Winchester is a contract supervisor at the State Department's mail facility in Sterling who was diagnosed with anthrax Oct. 25.

The man was on oxygen until last weekend, his doctors said. A few days ago, he got out of bed and walked on his own.

The patient's wife and his daughter, Terri Chrisman, accompanied him, said Lawrence K. Van Hoose, vice president of Valley Health System, which owns the Winchester facility.

"I talked to him before he left, and he's very happy to be able to go home," Van Hoose said. "He's looking forward to getting back to his routine. The one comment that was made was, apparently the family dog is very attached to the patient and is pacing every day looking for him."

Fatteh said her patient looks forward to getting together with his buddies to share some laughs.

"That's how I knew when he was feeling good," the doctor said. "He was constantly joking."