My mother has beed in S.I.C.U. with sepsis for a month now. How does it stay in the bloodstream even with?

antibiotic treatments?

how long does

As you may know, many strains of bacteria are growing resistant to antibiotics because of society's overuse of them. Sepsis may also stay in the blood because the blood feeds every tissue in the body. Once bacteria enters the bloodstream, it essentially enters every cell in the body. Sepsis is very serious and can often be fatal. The doctors are probably trying not to shock her system with antibiotic overload because she could get sick from having too many antibiotics. (resident flora[healthy bacteria] would be killed)

Sepsis is an intense condition due to the full body onslaught the bacteria can has in the bloodstream. IV antibiotics such as Vancomycin will kill the bacteria within a week (typically) but this depends on the bacteria causing the illness and your mothers ability to fight it. If she is weak and has a weakened immune system, it could take longer. If the bug is resistant, they might have to up the ante with some even higher class antibiotics that can be very costly.

With sepsis, also called "septicemia", the infectious organism has spread from where it started to every part of the body with a blood supply. This means many places for infection to hide out and when this is combined with antibiotic-resistant organisms, wiping out the infectious agent completely can be very hard.

Areas with poor circulation that become colonized with the infection do not get exposed to as much of an antibiotic as areas with good blood flow as well.

A long fight against sepsis also exhausts the capabilities of the immune system. Since the immune system has to have a certain vulnerability for an infection to take hold, this only makes things worse. If she is in SICU, she's obviously had surgery, which is stress on the body as well as being invasive and a common means of developing sepsis. Hospital acquired (nosocomial infections) are notoriously stubborn to treat as well.

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