Sudden Deaths of Neonates Receiving Intravenous Infusion of Lipid Emulsion Contaminated with Citrobacter freundii

At an intensive care unit, four neonates died consecutively within 80 minutes. Citrobacter freundii was isolated from blood samples of the 4 patients. It was also cultured from the leftover SMOFlipid that had been infused intravenously into the patients. In this in vitro study, we evaluated the bacterial growth kinetics and change in size of fat globules in SMOFlipid contaminated with C. freundii. Following the growth of bacteria, pH of SMOFlipid decreased to < 6, and the number of fat globules larger than 5 µm increased. Pulmonary fat embolism is proposed as a possible cause of the sudden deaths as well as fulminant sepsis.