THOUSAND OAKS : Doctors Treating ‘Flesh-Eating’ Disease

Officials at Los Robles Regional Medical Center reported Wednesday that doctors are treating another case of necrotizing fasciitis, the so-called “flesh-eating bacteria.”

The patient, whose name was not released by hospital staff members, apparently is responding to initial treatment.

“The man is here,” a hospital official said Wednesday. But “the patient and the patient’s family have requested that we not release any information.”

The newest case brings to six the number of patients who have been treated at Los Robles for the fast-spreading disease in the past 10 months.

Of those, four patients survived after being treated in the Thousand Oaks hospital’s hyperbaric chamber, an oxygen-rich treatment that slows the spread of the bacteria.

But last November, the disease killed Thomas G. Lakin, chancellor of the Ventura County Community College District, who died days after complaining of a sore throat.

Lakin was never treated in the hyperbaric chamber at the hospital, in part because doctors told his family that he would not survive the treatment.

The late chancellor’s widow and four children have since filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the hospital, alleging that physicians failed to properly diagnose the ailment.