Medical news August 6: Hanoi has first death due to streptococcus
According to the Hanoi Department of Health, the first death from streptococcus this year was an 86-year-old female patient in Quoc Oai district.
Death from streptococcus
She was taken by her family to Military Hospital 103 with symptoms of high fever, headache, drowsiness... Here, the patient was admitted for inpatient treatment and had blood and cerebrospinal fluid culture tests.
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| Experts recommend that people absolutely do not use unprocessed pork. |
The patient tested positive for Streptococcus suis. Despite intensive treatment, due to old age and severe disease progression, the patient did not survive.
This is the city’s first death from streptococcus suis infection this year. Thus, since the beginning of the year, Hanoi has recorded 7 cases of streptococcus suis, including one death.
According to health experts, people at high risk of contracting streptococcus are those involved in slaughtering pigs, processing sick or dead pigs; people working in concentrated pig slaughterhouses; people eating raw blood pudding and pork products that are not thoroughly processed.
With this disease, the incubation period is short, from a few hours to 2-3 days, however, in some cases the incubation period can be up to several weeks.
People infected with streptococcus suis may develop sepsis, purulent meningitis, or a combination of both. Depending on the type, the disease can progress to mild or severe, with some cases being severely infected from the start.
The most common clinical manifestation of streptococcal infection is meningitis. Common symptoms of meningitis include: high fever, headache, nausea, vomiting, tinnitus, deafness, stiff neck, impaired perception, subcutaneous hemorrhage in the form of dots and plaques on the ear rim, nose, face, and trunk. Examination shows stiff neck, lumbar puncture shows abnormalities: cloudy fluid, increased pressure, increased white blood cells and protein in the cerebrospinal fluid.
Severe cases progress rapidly to sepsis syndrome, septic shock (with or without meningitis): circulatory collapse, severe blood clotting disorders, multiple organ failure, gastrointestinal bleeding, coma, rapid death.
Many children have Covid-19, parents mistake it for flu
According to Dr. Nguyen Huu Vinh, Head of the General Planning Department of Hai Duong Children's Hospital, in the past month, the number of children with Covid-19 who have had to be hospitalized for treatment has been the highest since the beginning of the year. The hospital's Infectious Diseases Department regularly has 10-15 children with Covid-19 receiving inpatient treatment.
All children under 1 year old, not vaccinated against Covid-19, hospitalized with high fever of 38-39 degrees Celsius or higher, runny nose, cough, fussiness, and loss of appetite.
Before being admitted to the hospital, most of the children had been given medicine by their parents to take at home but it did not help. They mistakenly thought their children had influenza A, influenza B, etc. It was only when they were admitted to the hospital for testing that they were confirmed to have Covid-19.
Hai Duong Children's Hospital has an isolation area to treat Covid-19 patients. Most children with the disease are discharged after a few days of treatment. Since the beginning of the year, Hai Duong Children's Hospital has not recorded any Covid-19 patients with serious complications.
However, Dr. Nguyen Huu Vinh warns that parents who arbitrarily buy medicine to treat their children at home without knowing exactly what disease their children have can cause significant harm to their health.
Children with Covid-19 who are treated at home incorrectly or for a long time can have dangerous complications related to the respiratory system. When children show unusual health symptoms, parents need to take them to see a doctor for timely examination and treatment advice.
Parents should not let their children come into contact with adults showing signs of illness, limit going to crowded places, and ensure children have balanced daily meals to increase their resistance...
A great step forward in Genetics
Speaking at a recent event of the Vietnam Genetics Association, Associate Professor, Dr. Kim Bao Giang, Vice Rector of Hanoi Medical University, said that the field of medical genetics is increasingly contributing to medicine. Biomedical-genetic activities are gradually contributing to disease diagnosis, disease prevention and are the basis for treating genetic diseases.
In recent years, the field of genetics has made many new advances with the development of genetic techniques, creating many great changes in many fields.
Especially in medicine, the application of achievements of genetics has brought many breakthroughs in disease diagnosis and treatment, contributing to better health care for Vietnamese people. Medical genetics affects all fields of medicine such as: oncology, hematology, cardiology, and reproductive support.
According to the President of the Vietnam Medical Genetics Association, Associate Professor, Dr. Tran Duc Phan, advances in genetic engineering have created great strides in the treatment of important diseases such as cancer. These include targeted therapy, immunomodulation therapy and gene therapy.
Genetic interventions are increasingly being applied, including in the treatment of difficult diseases such as cancer.
Some of the current advances in cancer genetics are oligonucleotide gene therapy; cancer lytic virus therapy; cell and tissue therapy; cancer vaccines and genetic interventions in cancer, especially methods using CRISPR-Cas9.
Genetic interventions are taking shape and will be a future direction. Gene therapy and targeted molecular therapy provide clinical outcomes and cancer treatments that were previously unimaginable.
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