Trichinosis in US?

[spinnerette]

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I'm doing this FM elective during my 4th year.
A patient came in with several GI symptoms including diarrhea, vomitting, nausea, etc.
The only significant piece of history I got out of her is that she bought some store-bought frozen pork dumplings last week. The woman told me that she couldn't understand the instruction so she just halfass-cooked them. Otherwise, she has been eating McD and BK for the past week.

I couldn't figure out what the source of her GI symptoms but I suspected Trichinosis (I actually went into great length about her cooking process because that was the only thing she cooked over the week and I had a lot of time on my hand since she was my last pt =P). Well, based on my understanding, you need to boil them for like 10min and she said she only did it for several minutes (she just dumped the bag of frozen dumplings into boiling water and waited for the water to boil again)

Anyhoo, my preceptor told me that we don't need to give her any mebendazole and she might have some mild food poisoning from a fast food chain.

I don't know. What's your take on this? I mean, I did go home and read about trichinosis and nowadays, most of the Trichinosis cases are due to eating improperly cooked wild games.

What do you guys think?

 

[turkeyjerky]

I agree w/ your attending. Trichinosis is very uncommon in this country--cases are typically due to wild game, boar or organic pork. Highly unlikely from mass-produced store bought pork.

 

[JustPlainBill]

I'm doing this FM elective during my 4th year.
A patient came in with several GI symptoms including diarrhea, vomitting, nausea, etc.
The only significant piece of history I got out of her is that she bought some store-bought frozen pork dumplings last week. The woman told me that she couldn't understand the instruction so she just halfass-cooked them. Otherwise, she has been eating McD and BK for the past week.

I couldn't figure out what the source of her GI symptoms but I suspected Trichinosis (I actually went into great length about her cooking process because that was the only thing she cooked over the week and I had a lot of time on my hand since she was my last pt =P). Well, based on my understanding, you need to boil them for like 10min and she said she only did it for several minutes (she just dumped the bag of frozen dumplings into boiling water and waited for the water to boil again)

Anyhoo, my preceptor told me that we don't need to give her any mebendazole and she might have some mild food poisoning from a fast food chain.

I don't know. What's your take on this? I mean, I did go home and read about trichinosis and nowadays, most of the Trichinosis cases are due to eating improperly cooked wild games.

What do you guys think?

I can see where you'd think trichinosis. However, I would think rotavirus would be more common....we regularly get an infusion of it in October, coinciding with the mass numbers of people and small kiddos at the state fair. The little mobile petri dishes (sorry, my attendings words, not mine) do a great job of putting the virus on just about every surface in the state fair and voila'.....