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. 2025 Jul 30.
doi: 10.1007/s15010-025-02617-6. Online ahead of print.

An unusual case of necrotizing pneumonia in a healthy apnea diver

Christian Beyer  1 , Rayya Alsalameh  2 , Christian Bogdan  2 , Marion Ganslmayer  3 , Markus F Neurath  3 , Richard Strauß  3 , Julia Fürst  3
Affiliations

An unusual case of necrotizing pneumonia in a healthy apnea diver

Christian Beyer et al. Infection. .

Abstract

We report a case of necrotizing pneumonia caused by hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumoniae in an athletic, 54-year-old apnea diver. Since hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumoniae strains prevail in Southeast Asia and are mainly associated with "invasive liver abscess syndrome", we considered and tested for hypervirulence only when the necrotizing pneumonia turned out to be refractory to initial antibiotic treatment. Although the hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumoniae strain in our patient did not show multi-drug resistance, a total of 6 months of high-dose antibiotic therapy was necessary to cure the infection.

Keywords: Difficult-to-treat; Hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumoniae; Pneumonia; Virulence factors.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Consent to participate: Not applicable (case report). Consent to publish: The participant has consented to the submission of the case report to the journal. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

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