SWINE FLU 1#

By Dr Himanshu Gul Mirani

Emergency Physician

-          Introduction

-          Symptoms and clinical signs

-          Transmission

-          Diagnosis

INTRODUCTION:

Swine flu (H1N1) cases are again raging Delhi and already 64 cases have been diagnosed and the cases are expected to rise. This article is aimed to give public awareness to the laymen about this disease condition and its possible treatment and prevention in a comprehensive way.

SYMPTOMS AND CLINICAL SIGNS:

Like most viral/ flu syndromes, Swine flu is characterized by fever, running nose, cough, body ache, fatigue with aches, decreased appetite, nausea/ vomiting, body rash, itchy eyes, sore throat. Most people with good immunity would be able to fight out the infection and the disease wont progress further.

But in a select few, it can also lead to severe life threatening complications and they might be the initial presenting features like severe dehydration, pneumonia progressing to septic shock, electrolyte imbalances, kidney function derangements etc.

TRANSMISSION:

Swine flu is transmitted by contact from the animals/ birds to humans or there is transmission among humans like that of most viral illnesses – air borne (droplet) transmission specially within 1 meter distance; by fomites like the table tops/ door handles etc touched by infected hands of the diseased.

DIAGNOSIS:

Most of the times patients don’t require diagnostic tests for flu per se and clinical judgment is resorted to for diagnosis. Once the influenza activity is documented at some place the need for corroboratory evidence is less as most cases are usually mild/moderate in symptoms.

Tests are not routinely advised, not only from the view of diagnostic accuracy of these tests (as there is a wide variation in the accuracy from 10-70%) leading to many positive cases being missed, but also from the economic logistics perspective. Also, the usual panels of immunofluorescence studies or Rapid influenza detection tests don’t include Swine flu strain in particular. During the influenza

The most accurate diagnosis for Swine flu is a type of nucleic acid study called real time-reverse transcriptase test (r-RT PCR) and viral cultures. They require special sampling and testing equipments.