"After  years of marriage Pat Shoop thought shed shared every intimacy possible with her husband Bob. But that was before she became so ill with a Clostridium difficile infection last year that doctors suggested that a spousal stool transplant  yes a dose of Bobs feces  might be the only way to save her life. Id heard of intercourse but Id never heard of poopercourse Shoop  of Minnetonka Minn. jokes now. At the time though there was nothing funny about it. I was so sick I didnt care she recalled. It feels like the worst case of flu you could possibly possibly have. Shoop a longtime schoolteacher was suffering from recurrent C. diff infection a potentially lifethreatening bacterial illness that causes severe diarrhea abdominal pain nausea and vomiting. It comes back again and again resisting most treatments except as it turns out an infusion of stool from a healthy donor. A new review of more than two dozen scientific reports involving  patients some dating back  years finds that fecal bacteriotherapy commonly known as fecal transplant cured the problem in  percent of the cases. Nearly all got better after just one treatment. Thats a better record than other treatments including probiotics toxinbinding molecules and an experimental vaccine. The review offers the most comprehensive evidence so far in favor of the repugnantsounding practice in which stool from a healthy donor is emulsified usually mixed with water or saline and transferred via a nasal tube or enema to the gut of a seriously ill C. diff patient. Its considered a treatment of last resort said Amee R. Manges an epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal Canada who led the review published in the most recent issue of the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. Once transplanted the healthy fecal bacteria help restore balance to the patients bowels. C. diff infections typically develop after the intestinal flora is disturbed usually by overuse of certain antibiotics. For most of the last decade fecal transplants have been regarded as something of a fringe treatment by outsiders but as a viable treatment by doctors who see desperate C. diff patients every day. It validates what weve thought all along said Dr. Tim Rubin a gastroenterologist with Essentia Health in Duluth Minn. whose team performed its th fecal transplant last week. We quote people a success rate of about  percent. Shoop who was diagnosed in May  believes she contracted the infection either while in a nursing home for a broken arm or in a hospital for breast cancer treatment. Rates of C. diff acquired in health care settings have skyrocketed in recent years climbing more than  percent in people older than  between  and  according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Between  percent and  percent of those patients may wind up with hardtotreat recurrent infections Rubin said. For Shoop getting an appointment with Dr. Rubin was a godsend. She and her husband stayed at a nearby hotel where Bob  was under pressure to produce a usable stool sample within  minutes of her scheduled appointment.  We gave him chocolate we gave him wine we gave him steak she said. Bob complied and the pair rushed to the clinic where Dr. Rubin snaked a tube through Shoops nose and into her stomach. It was  minutes she said. He told me Youre not going to taste it youre not going to smell it. And she didnt. That was on a Thursday. By Sunday afternoon Shoop was better. Nearly a year later she says she still feels fine. Her health is so much improved in fact that Shoop has become an ambassador of sorts for fecal transplant sharing her story with anyone who raises the specter of C. diff.   I tell them I know of a procedure that works said Shoop who believes she would have died without it. Now Im disgustingly normal."