A case of death within 72 hours after community-acquired bloodstream infection caused by klebsiella variicola

Klebsiella subspecies infection is widely misdiagnosed and underestimated in clinic. We report a patient who was admitted to hospital due to unknown high fever. Bacterial culture only revealed the klebsiella pneumonia. Broad-spectrum antibiotics failed to improve patient's symptoms, although these antibiotics are sensitive to klebsiella pneumonia according to the drug susceptibility results. Patient rapidly entered sepsis and subsequent sepsis shock, and died within 72 hours. The delayed PMseq-DNA Pro high throughput gene detection revealed the mixed infection of klebsiella pneumoniae and klebsiella variicola. This is a very rare case that patient suffered so rapid deterioration and died from bacterial infection within short period of time. Klebsiella variicola could contribute to rapid illness progression, while it was revealed by gene detection rather than classic laboratory methods. Which suggests that early genetic detection should be recommended in cases of complex infection.