Answers

Ken Addley in MCQs, MEQs and OSPEs in Occupational Medicine, 2023

Try to rule out active TB by arranging a chest X-ray and performing a clinical examination to include a detailed history of any relevant symptoms of TB, for example: Night sweats.Unintentional weight loss.Haemoptysis.New cough longer than three weeks’ duration.Fever.Fatigue.Chills.Loss of appetite.Chest pain.

Cancer

Sally Robinson in Priorities for Health Promotion and Public Health, 2021

Common symptoms of lung cancer include a persistent cougha cough which may be different from normal, e.g. painful, coughing phlegm or bloodbreathlessnesspain in chest or shoulderrecurrent chest infectionsloss of appetiteweight lossfatigue

‘Where is the state?’

Helen Macdonald, Ian Harper in Understanding Tuberculosis and Its Control, 2019

In addition, during the interview she raised some issues that led me to rethink the additional factors related to the perception of tuberculosis. You can get TB if you don’t have a proper personal hygiene and if you have a contact with a sick person … But when a patient has tuberculosis I have to understand if it is natural or spiritual. If it is natural I give specific herbs with honey to stop the cough, and sometimes they completely cure the patients. If it is spiritual or caused by a witch attack, I do the animal sacrifice and use the herbs. At the end of the treatment I send the patient to the lab and inform him about the district aid. But during the last year I had only two patients with this problem, even if is very common.

Cost-effectiveness of influenza vaccination with a high dose quadrivalent vaccine of the elderly population in Belgium, Finland, and Portugal

Published in Journal of Medical Economics, 2023

Fabián P. Alvarez, Pierre Chevalier, Matthias Borms, Hélène Bricout, Catia Marques, Anu Soininen, Tatu Sainio, Christine Petit, Caroline de Courville

Influenza is an acute respiratory infection caused by an RNA virus of the Orthomyxoviridae family. Usually, flu starts suddenly with a high fever, muscular soreness, headache, severe fatigue, general discomfort, and respiratory symptoms, such as dry cough, rhinorrhea. The illness lasts for about a week, but fatigue is frequently felt for two weeks or more1. A dry cough can persist for two weeks. Although benign in most cases, influenza may lead to severe complications or an aggravation of an already existing chronic disease (such as diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart failure, chronic kidney disease2). Evidence shows that influenza increases the risk of pneumonia by 100 in the week following the infection, due to the influenza virus implication in the pathogenesis of several respiratory bacterial pathogens commonly associated with pneumonia3. In addition, a large number of published papers suggests that laboratory-confirmed influenza infection may be associated with an increased risk of acute myocardial infarction estimated as six times higher4. In a case-crossover analysis using California data, among 36,975 hospitalized ischemic strokes, the risk of stroke after an Influenza‐like illness (ILI) episode increased by almost three times in the days following the flu infection5.

A review of the DTaP-IPV-HB-PRP-T Hexavalent vaccine in pediatric patients

Published in Expert Review of Vaccines, 2023

Andrew Dakin, Ray Borrow, Peter D. Arkwright

Globally, there were more than 151,000 cases of pertussis in 2018. Pertussis is spread easily from person to person via droplets from coughing or sneezing. Patients are contagious up to 3 weeks from the beginning of the cough [17]. In European Union/European Economic Area (EU/EEA) countries there were 35,627 cases in 2018 with 72% of the notified cases coming from 5 countries: Germany, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and the UK [18]. In 2020, there were 994 cases reported, while in 2021 only 49 new cases. The COVID-19 pandemic and implementation of social distancing and lockdown in the UK from March 2020 significantly impacted both the spread and detection of pertussis infections. Since the introduction of the maternal vaccination program, there has been a decline in infantile Pertussis from 234/100,000 in 2012, to 0.7/100,000 in 2021 [19].

The financial burden of treating patients presenting with acute and chronic cough

Published in Current Medical Research and Opinion, 2021

Surinder S. Birring, Craig J. Currie, Sarah E. Holden, Sara Jenkins-Jones, Ellen R. Berni, Bethan Jones, Thomas R. Berni, Haya Langerman

Although coughs are diverse, there are definitions of cough presentation that can assist in their classification. Acute cough is defined as lasting less than 3 weeks, and it is one of the most common complaints for which patients visit their doctor2. In the vast majority of cases, acute cough is due to a viral upper respiratory tract infection3. Chronic cough (CC) in adults is usually defined as a cough that lasts 8 weeks or more2. It requires specific approaches to treatment as it may be due to a variety of underlying causes such as asthma, gastro-oesophageal reflux, and rhinitis/sinusitis. However, in a proportion of cases, no underlying cause can be identified4. In addition to the physical effects of CC, many people are equally affected by its psychosocial effects5.