The initial shock Tony Berger received when he said a nurse at Bloomington Hospital told him he was being treated as though he had diphtheria has slightly subsided. Bloomington Hospital cannot confirm a preliminary diagnosis of Berger and has not had any reported cases of diphtheria in 2007, said Amanda Roach, media relations coordinator for Bloomington Hospital.\nBerger, a junior, was discharged on Saturday from Bloomington Hospital with the belief that he had diphtheria. After being given antibiotics and testing negative for mononucleosis and strep throat, Berger said nurses and his emergency room doctor alluded to diphtheria as a diagnosis.\n“The doctor said I had symptoms of diphtheria,” Berger said.\nProduced by a bacterial toxin enzyme, diphtheria takes the form of a respiratory illness, and fewer than five cases a year are reported in the U.S., said Vickie VanDeventer, the infection control practitioner at Bloomington Hospital.\nBerger said the emergency room doctor he saw told his mother that he had the symptoms of a diphtheria patient, and that a nurse told him he was being treated as one.\nHe was treated as a diphtheria patient due to the severity of his symptoms, Berger said. However, his diagnosis was not conclusive because the hospital did not perform a diphtheria test, both Roach and Berger said.\nRepresentatives from Bloomington Hospital were not able to answer why a diphtheria test was not administered to Berger because of the patient privacy laws outlined in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.\nUpon a follow-up visit on Tuesday at the IU Health Center, Berger said he asked for a diphtheria test in order to clear up whether he actually had diphtheria. His request was denied.\nNancy Macklin, a nurse practitioner and director of nursing for the health center, said the conditions under which the health center would order a diphtheria test are very specific.\n“It would be when it was based on the signs and symptoms, physical examination and patient history,” Macklin said. \nMacklin said those are general standards under which a test would be ordered and they hold no indications for this specific patient. Again, the HIPA Act prevents Macklin from commenting on any individual patient.\nDr. Hugh Jessop, director of the health center, said that after reading of Berger’s case in the Indiana Daily Student he immediately called Macklin, who confirmed with Bloomington Hospital that there was no confirmed case of diphtheria.\nThe Indiana Daily Student reported Tuesday that Berger contracted diphtheria. However, Bloomington Hospital cannot confirm this with lab results.\n“It’s one of those things where when we see something like (diphtheria) in the paper we want to know about it,” Jessop said. “The hospital calls us immediately if they have a communicable disease that has been laboratorially confirmed. We would have gotten a phone call.”\nBerger is currently recovering and continues to take medication – an antibiotic used to treat diphtheria as well as other bacterial infections – to treat the infection that caused his throat to swell to the point that he had difficulty breathing and left him with a high fever. \n – City and State editor Elizabeth Dilts contributed to this report.
Bloomington Hospital: no lab results that confirm diphtheria
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