Tetanus
Description of the disease
Tetanus is an infectious disease caused by the anaerobic bacillus Clostridium tetani, which affects the nervous system, causing severe muscle spasms. The causative agent of tetanus most often lives in the ground and, together with it, gets into damage on the skin (cuts, sores, burns, frostbite, animal bites). The pathogen is also found in water bodies, house dust, and animal feces. The infection is localized in deep wounds, because they have anoxic conditions. Treatment of the damaged area with antiseptics does not neutralize tetanus. Spasmodic muscle contraction caused by tetanus spores can lead to respiratory failure, swallowing, myocardial infarction, pneumonia, sepsis, bronchitis, muscle/tendon rupture, pulmonary edema, cranial nerve palsy, which can be fatal.
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Treatment
Use of anti-tetanus serum or specific immunoglobulin. After that, surgical treatment of the wound is carried out.
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Prevention
Prevention of tetanus - vaccination for children and adults, as well as compliance with the rules of personal hygiene (if you were in nature or in the countryside and came into contact with the soil, take a shower, wash things at high temperatures).
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Symptoms
The incubation period of the disease is from 1 week to several, after which the following symptoms appear:
- Weakness, irritability, chills
- Headache, pain in the neck, lower back
- Twitching, dull pulling pains in the area of injury/wound
- Spasms of facial and masticatory muscles (sardonic "smile")
- Spasm of the muscles of the back and limbs (opisthotonus)
- Rigidity of the muscles of the back of the head, which spreads to the whole body
- Disturbance of swallowing due to spasm of the throat muscles
- Painful spasms of various muscles of the body
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Diagnostics
It is difficult to diagnose tetanus through clinical tests in the early stages, because the toxin is not detected in the blood. Early diagnosis is possible in the case of a carefully collected anamnesis. Treatment of tetanus: use of anti-tetanus serum or specific immunoglobulin. After that, surgical treatment of the wound is carried out.