Saturday, February 08, 2014

The Flu

The flu is underestimated. It often gets compared with the common cold, a nuisance. But influenza can be a life-threatening or fatal disease, and H1N1 threatens to be that dangerous. At the very least, it's a wickedly symptomatic disease that lands healthy patients in bed with debilitating myalgias. And even healthy patients can't avoid risk; in fact, H1N1 seems to cause the worst pulmonary reactions in young and healthy patients, especially pregnant women. We have had a few cases of influenza in the ICU with patients on extensive life-support, and it's really eye-opening.

In any case, pediatric anesthesia in wintertime means cases are occasionally cancelled for the child with a fever, cough, and sniffles. While I often tolerate minor or improving symptoms, I do cancel cases for the child whose airway is hyperreactive from a respiratory virus. For elective cases, we just don't want to take any risk with children. A single experience with severe laryngospasm is all that's necessary to teach us to respect the sick child and anesthesia.

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