Dengue – what you need to know
For the past couple of weeks, our house situated in New Delhi has seen 2 cases of Dengue and believe me, it is not a good situation.On investigating, we found out that almost 1/3rd of most private hospitals were full with dengue cases and rooms were unavailable. And the Government had recently stated Delhi dengue-free few days ago in the newspapers – a very sad situation.
Dengue is one of those diseases caused by a virus that has no treatment and requires rest alongwith optimal fluid intake.
Here is what you need to know :
a) Dengue is caused by mosquitoes that are carrying the virus. It is a chain reaction – mosquitoes bite infected humans to get the disease and then transmit it to other humans.
b) These mosquitoes bite only during the day.
c) They are mainly found in areas close to dirty water or where water storage is not regulated. Mainly spreads during the rainy season.
d) Normally takes 5-6 days after biting before it shows symptoms like high fever, headaches, joint/muscle pains, nausea etc etc.
e) Dengue fever can get fatal and therefore, needs immediate attention including regular supervision by doctors.
f) There are 4 types of dengue viruses (known as DEN1, DEN2, DEN3 and DEN4) and each can infect a human only once – therefore, each person can be infected by a particular type of dengue virus only once.
One of the reasons I am posting this article is to to highlight another problem we faced during the course of this treatment. The patient’s platelets had gone down under 25000 and the doctors advised that blood transfusion may be required (a process where they take platelets from a donor with the same blood group and transfuse it into the patient’s blood stream – not as simple as it sounds). Transfusion is normally done when platelets fall below 10,000 in adults and under 15000 in children – completely at the doctor’s discretion.
Typically, while the patient is in observation, doctors monitor mainly the Blood pressure and platelets level. When the platelet levels start rising and show some stagnancy is what doctors consider a positive sign of the virus getting under control.
Here is what needs to be known regarding blood transfusion during dengue :
a) Only male donors are preferred as platelet levels in females are low.
b) The nerves of the donor (in both arms) must be prominant as the needles are required to stay in the nerves for almost an hour or even more. They take blood from one arm, seperate the platelets and release the blood back in the other arm instantaneously. The prominance of the nerves was an issue for us and only one out of our 4 donors were acceptable by the hospital.
c) Finally, once the doctors establish that the nerves are prominant, they test the blood for diseases like HIV etc. Also, donors should not be taking regular medicines like for BP or heart or diabates etc. The donors should also make sure that they have not consumed alcohol in the 24 hrs prior to this.
In normal circumstances, transfusion is not required, but in cases where it is required, 1-2 units are normally sufficient. So it is best to make sure that donors should be ready immediately on detection of dengue – don’t leave it to the last minute to avoid panic.
Feel free to post your experiences as it may help others in understanding this disease better.
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Here is some online material for your ready reference.
Booklet – Protect yourself and your family from Dengue
(Booklet – English/ Chinese/ Malay/ Tamil)
