September 20, 2024

Athens News

News in English from Greece

Two deaths from invasive streptococcus, one infected person hospitalized – EOΟΔΥ representatives in Ilia


The EOΟΔΥ team arrived in Ilia to investigate cases of invasive streptococcus, from which two people have died and a third is in hospital. About the causes and symptoms of the disease.

Three cases of streptococcus – coincidence or pattern

EOΟΔΥ staff are in Ilia and take blood samples in controversial cases at the Pyrgos hospital. How reported previously our publication, A 48-year-old man from Livadia, who was vacationing in one of the areas of Ilia, died not from a bite of a poisonous spider, as was initially stated, but from invasive streptococcus.

The man who was allegedly bitten by the spider was in critical condition. He was on holiday in Ilia and was hospitalised after an encounter with the spider on August 6. The man initially felt pain in his leg, not realising that he had been bitten. However, his condition rapidly worsened, and symptoms consistent with a venomous bite. The man was intubated and hospitalized in serious but stable condition at Andreas Papandreou Hospital, where he later died.

The second strep death involved a 45-year-old man who was also in Ilia on holiday in Ancient Olympia. He suddenly developed strep symptoms.and he ended up in the intensive care unit of a hospital in Patras. A third person with the same clinical picture, but in good condition, is also being treated in the same hospital.

Using the samples, EOΟΔΥ staff will determine whether these incidents are random, as doctors at Pyrgos Hospital claim, or whether they are related.

What is strep and how is it transmitted?

Streptococci are gram-positive aerobic organisms that cause a variety of diseases, including pharyngitis, pneumonia, wound and skin infections, sepsis, and endocarditis. This is a common bacteria that is quite common.

Group A streptococcus is transmitted by airborne droplets, with the secretions of patients, contact with contaminated surfaces and with infected wounds on the skin of patients, as well as from healthy carriers of the bacteria. EODY notes, writes CNN Greece that group A streptococcus is much more easily transmitted by symptomatic and sick people than by healthy carriers of the bacteria.

Symptoms of infection

Group A streptococcus typically causes symptoms such as pharyngitis, fever, scarlet fever rash, skin infections such as impetigo* and cellulitis**, which is an inflammation of the skin and subcutaneous fat.

If streptococcal infection is not treated with antibiotics, it can lead to serious complications, such as kidney (poststreptococcal glomerulonephritis) or heart (rheumatism). The symptoms that an infected person will experience depend on the type of infection caused by the bacteria.

Pharyngotonsillitis, for example, is characterized by fever, sore throat, dysphagia, enlarged tonsils with a whitish coating, enlarged lymph nodes and hemorrhagic spots on the palate.

*Impetigo – is a superficial skin infection that occurs with crusting and blistering caused by streptococci, staphylococci, or a combination of both. Ecthyma is an ulcerative form of impetigo. Diagnosis is clinical.

**Disease cellulite has nothing to do with the aesthetic defect commonly referred to as “orange peel”. Cellulitis is usually caused by bacterial flora – group A streptococci, Staphylococcus aureus, pneumococcus. The process is associated with an open wound surface or skin abscess.



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