Gastroenteritis Definition Cause Symptoms Treatment Prevention And Vaccination

Definition:
Gastroenteritis is a medical condition characterized by inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract that involves both the stomach and the small intestine.

Causes:

Gastroenteritis has many causes. Viruses and bacteria are the most common.Gastroenteritis caused by viruses may last 1-2 days. On the other hand, bacterial cases can last a week or more.

Bacteria: These are the most common bacterial causes:

• Escherichia coli - Traveler’s diarrhea, food poisoning, dysentery, colitis, or uremic syndrome.
• Salmonella - Typhoid fever; handling poultry or reptiles such as turtles that carry the germs.
• Campylobacter - Undercooked meat, unpasteurized milk.
• Shigella - Dysentery

Viruses: Viral outbreaks (30-40% of cases in children) can spread rapidly through close contact among children in day care and schools. Poor handwashing habits can spread viruses. Common viral causes include the following:

• Adenoviruses
• Rotaviruses
• Caliciviruses
• Astroviruses
• Norovirus 

Parasites and protozoans: These tiny organisms are less frequently responsible for intestinal irritation.May pick up one of these by drinking contaminated water. Swimming pools are common places to come in contact with these parasites. Common parasites include these:

• Giardia - The most frequent cause of waterborne diarrhea causing giardiasis.
• Cryptosporidium - Affects mostly people with weakened immune systems, causes watery diarrhea

Other common causes: Chemical toxins most often found in seafood, food allergies, heavy metals, antibiotics, and other medications also may be responsible for bouts of gastroenteritis that are not infectious to others.

Medications:

• Aspirin
• Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medicines (such as Motrin or Advil)
• Antibiotics
• Caffeine
• Steroids - Excessive use or a sudden change in frequency or dosage
• Laxatives

Symptoms:

• Abdominal gas, bloating or belching
• Abdominal pain or cramps
• Blood-streaked stools
• Flu-like symptoms (fatigue, fever, sore throat, headache, cough, aches and pains)
• Nausea, which may be described as feelings of wooziness, queasiness, retching, sea-sickness, car-sickness, or an upset stomach
• Vomiting including multiple episodes
• Watery diarrhea including multiple episodes
• Weakness

Treatment:

Treatment generally involves a multifaceted plan that addresses the cause; minimizes the discomfort of nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea; and decreases the risk of dehydration.

• Not eating solid foods to rest the stomach and intestines until symptoms have passed.

• Drinking plenty of fluids (water or rehydrating fluid, such as Pedialyte) to ensure adequate hydration.

• In some cases, medications are used to treat gastroenteritis. Antibiotics may be prescribed when gastroenteritis is caused by a bacterial infection, such as in bacterial food poisoning due to Shigella,Salmonella, or Campylobacter infection.

Treatment of severe gastroenteritis that does not resolve or leads to dehydration may require hospitalization and rehydration with intravenous fluids.

Prevention:

• A supply of easily accessible uncontaminated water and good sanitation practices are important for reducing rates of infection and clinically significant gastroenteritis.

• Personal measures (such as hand washing) have been found to decrease incidence and prevalence rates of gastroenteritis in both the developing and developed world by as much as 30%. Alcohol-based gels may also be effective.

• Breastfeeding is important, especially in places with poor hygiene, as is improvement of hygiene generally.

• Breast milk reduces both the frequency of infections and their duration.

• Avoiding contaminated food or drink should also be effective.

Vaccination:

Due to both its effectiveness and safety, in 2009 the World Health Organization recommended that the rotavirus vaccine be offered to all children globally Two commercial rotavirus vaccines exist and several more are in development. In Africa and Asia these vaccines reduced severe disease among infants and countries that have put in place national immunization programs have seen a decline in the rates and severity of disease.This vaccine may also prevent illness in non-vaccinated children by reducing the number of circulating infections.Since 2000, the implementation of a rotavirus vaccination program in the United States has substantially decreased the number of cases of diarrhea by as much as 80 percent. The first dose of vaccine should be given to infants between 6 and 15 weeks of age.The oral cholera vaccine has been found to be 50–60% effective over 2 years.

Pyrexia Its Definition Cause Type And Management

PYREXIA:

Definition:

A high temperature or fever, known as pyrexia, occurs when the body temperature rises above the normal level of 37 C if measured in the mouth, or 37.7 C if measured in the rectum.

Cause:

• Most fevers are caused by pyrogens fever-inducing toxins released by viruses or bacteria. Pyrogens act on the temperature regulating centre in the brain. Common illnesses caused by such infection are the common cold, tonsillitis, influenza and urinary tract infections cystitis. Fever may also occur in non-infectious conditions such as dehydration, heart attack or cancer.

• In addition you can develop a high fever from over-exposure to heat, and especially to the sun. This is known as heat stroke.

• In children, a high temperature may be caused by infections such as measles or an upper respiratory tract infection such as tonsillitis. For some children a high temperature can lead to convulsions or seizures which are caused by the effect that the fever has on the brain.

Symptoms:

A fever may be accompanied by:

• Shivering
• Headache
• Sweating
• Thirst
• Flushed face
• Hot skin
• Rapid breathing 
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Types:

• Intermittent fever: The temperature elevation is present only for a certain period, later cycling back to normal, e.g. malaria, kala-azar, pyaemia, orsepticemia. Following are its types 
• Quotidian fever, with a periodicity of 24 hours, typical of Plasmodium falciparum.
• Tertian fever (48 hour periodicity), typical of Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium ovale.
• Quartan fever (72 hour periodicity), typical of Plasmodium malariae.
• Remittent fever: Temperature remains above normal throughout the day and fluctuates more than 1 °C in 24 hours, e.g., infective endocarditis.
• Pel-Ebstein fever: A specific kind of fever associated with Hodgkin's lymphoma, being high for one week and low for the next week and so on. However, there is some debate as to whether this pattern truly exists.

• A neutropenic fever, also called febrile neutropenia, is a fever in the absence of normal immune system function. Because of the lack of infection-fightingneutrophils, a bacterial infection can spread rapidly; this fever is, therefore, usually considered to require urgent medical attention. This kind of fever is more commonly seen in people receiving immune-suppressing chemotherapy than in apparently healthy people.

• Febricula is an old term for a low-grade fever, especially if the cause is unknown, no other symptoms are present, and the patient recovers fully in less than a week.

Management Of  Pyrexia :

• First step is to assess the temperature of the person using a thermometer.
• Take off the excessive or warm clothing of the person.
• Loosen the tight or restrictive clothing.
• Allow for good air and ventilation.
• Provide a tepid sponge bath to the person (tepid means the tap water that is neither too warm nor too cold).
• Give plenty of the clear fluids to replenish the fluids lost as a result of the heat evaporation.
• Ensure complete bed rest.
• Apply cold compresses on the forehead if advised by the physician.
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• Administer the anti- pyretic over the counter medications such as the acetaminophen or paracetamol. Avoid giving the aspirin drug to the adult or a child.