HYDERABAD:Sepsis, in simple terms ‘blood infection’ is the most overlooked serious health problem which can become a life- threatening condition.
‘’Though people are aware of patients dying of heart attack or cancer, but when doctors say that some one has died of blood infection, they do not believe because of ignorance about the problem,’’ points out Dr Anand Joshi, internal medicine consultant at Global Hospitals.
The reason for blood infection being overlooked is it develops gradually and symptoms do not manifest clearly. As a result patients do not know that they are affected with infection in blood and overlook the symptoms.
Infection in blood does not occur directly. Blood gets infected only through some other infected body part. If lungs or stomach are infected, infection spreads even into the blood. In fact blood infection is a result of infection’s progress in the body, Dr Srinivasan, hematologist, Care Hospitals, explains.
Generally patients get cured for infection of other body parts. But even after infection of body part is cured, it might have silently permeated into the blood, which patients will not be aware.
‘’We come across sixty to eighty patients every day who approach us for treatment for blood infection. In most of the cases infection will be in advanced stages. As a result even antibiotics will not work at that stage and advanced treatments or related surgeries are the only option to save patient. Sometimes the affected body parts have to be removed to stop infection spreading to other body parts,’’ Anand Joshi says.
The chances of both mortality and morbidity are higher in case of sepsis and doctors see it akin to cancer which slowly and silently develops.
There is pressing need for creating awareness about blood infection in our society as awareness levels are poor. The best way to stop blood infection is to spot it at early stage. Whenever a person is affected with any type of infection he should be cautious about it and take proper care of health and should make sure that his blood is not affected. A simple blood test will go a long way in finding out whether there is any infection in the blood, suggests Joshi.
Hematologists advise that symptoms like fever for more than three to four days, headaches, giddiness, blurring vision, under urination, low blood pressure, among others are some of the initial symptoms which might lead to blood infection in the long run.
If these symptoms are there in persons who had already suffered from some form of infection in their lifetime or who have blood pressure or diabetes, they should be extra cautious and make sure that they are not affected with blood infection. Because once if blood is affected it can prove fatal for the patient, summed up Joshi.
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