5 deadly misconceptions about dengue

When you have dengue fever, if you accidentally take aspirin, the bleeding in the patient will be more serious, maybe stomach bleeding is life-threatening.

Dengue fever can be cured if properly treated but the patient is still at risk of death if the subject believes in the following:

1. A one-time illness will immune for a lifetime

According to MSc Nguyen Trung Cap, Head of the Emergency Department, Central Hospital of Tropical Diseases, anyone can get dengue fever, whether the elderly, young children or young people. Currently, 4 types of dengue virus are circulated so patients can still become infected and even more severe next time.

Specifically, dengue virus has 4 different serotypes: DEN-1, DEN-2, DEN-3 and DEN-4 . If a person has been infected with a virus strain, it is only possible to make lifelong immunity to the virus strain but not yet immune to the remaining virus strains.

Therefore, each person may have dengue four times throughout his life. If he has a first episode of dengue fever, he or she may still have the disease three more times by the remaining Dengue virus types.

Patients with dengue fever treated at Khanh Hoa Tropical Hospital.(Photo: Minh Hoang).

2. Reducing fever is the end of the disease

As a rule, usually in the first 3 days, the patient will have high fever, headache, aches and pains, eye pain. However, this time is not the most dangerous time and there are no complications. The patient can still be treated at home.

MS Level recommended, from the 4th day (from the beginning of fever onwards) is the most dangerous time of the disease. The patient will not have a fever as high as 3 days ago. Many people often think that the disease is less dangerous and is about to leave but it is at this stage that severe complications can occur.

The first complication is an increase in vascular permeability and blood concentration. The patient will not perceive this, it will only be shown by the test indicators. Based on the test results, the doctor will decide whether to translate the fluid for the patient.

Excessive cases of extravasation may lead to warning signs such as: fatigue, pain in the liver, nausea, and vomiting. In young children, it can be seen that the child is empty or irritable, has little urination, and quits. These cases need to go to the nearest hospital right away to make up for the epidemic, avoiding the danger of life.

The second complication is hemorrhage due to thrombocytopenia. Patients may have epistaxis, root bleeding, subcutaneous hemorrhage . These patients need to go to health facilities to do tests to assess the level of thrombocytopenia so that physicians weigh prompt platelet transfusion if needed.

Experts note that all local hospitals have the ability to do this, not necessarily go to the central level , take time, endanger the patients and overload the hospital. Only in cases of shock patients, organ failure, health care at the grassroots level will resuscitate initially and transfer patients to central hospitals by ambulance.

3. Exposure to people with dengue fever will spread the disease

According to doctors, dengue fever is not transmitted through respiratory, secretions or contact with patients. Dengue fever is transmitted only through mosquitoes that burn infected people and then spread the disease to healthy people through stings.

4. Take Aspirin and Ibuprofen when you have dengue fever

It is necessary to pay attention to changing water, cleaning things in the house, not letting the water flow to be an environment for larvae to grow and give birth to mosquitoes.

When the first symptoms of dengue such as human pain, muscle aches, joint pain, headache, fever, most people often think of flu or viral fever and buy analgesic drugs voluntarily, in which There are 2 types of aspirin and Ibuprofen. These two drugs will make the patient's bleeding worse, possibly severe, life-threatening gastrointestinal bleeding.

Doctor explained, Dengue hemorrhagic fever causes coagulopathy, which makes the body more likely to bleed. In mild body, bleeding under the skin with red spots on the skin or bruises will occur. In severe cases, it will cause bleeding of the teeth, nosebleeds, vomiting of blood or black stools. Meanwhile, aspirin and Ibuprofen work together to prevent platelet aggregation, anti-clotting. Aspirin also has side effects such as peptic ulcer and can cause stomach bleeding, vomiting blood.

5. Mosquito-borne mosquitoes only appear in ponds, stagnant water

People often mistakenly refer to sewers, unsanitary places, prison ponds as the birthplace and residence of midges. In fact, mosquitoes reside in places where the water is in for a long time right in the very house we live in such as aquarium fish tanks, flowerpot plugs for water, rockery, water on the altar, standing water at fragments on alleyways or terraces .

Therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to changing the water, cleaning the objects in the house, not letting the water flow to be an environment for larvae to grow and give birth to mosquitoes. On high-rise houses, there are also mosquitoes that transmit dengue fever. Therefore, when spraying chemicals to kill mosquitoes, spray on all floors in the house, in order to kill all the mosquitoes, avoid the mosquitoes moving from the lower floor to the upper floor, from house to house.