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by sizzle 1590 days ago
How do they avoid bacteria from going up a shunt to the brain?
2 comments

I thought that was an interesting question as a layman. I found this, which I thought was an interesting read. [0]

[0]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/...

Yeah sterile technique has to be meticulous in shunt cases. There’s evidence that the number of people scrubbed into the case influences the shunt infection rate so students like me occasionally would not be permitted to scrub.
There’s generally no bacteria outside of the food tube though it certainly could happen the way you describe if there happened to be.