China News Service, Nanjing, June 9 (Xu Shanshan) Li Zhang (pseudonym), who was over 80 years old, suddenly developed fever and cough, and quickly developed into severe pneumonia. During this period, he suffered respiratory failure and life was dying... Behind these thrilling experiences of Li Zhang, It is actually related to the "intimate contact" of birds.
Li Zhang is 81 years old this year. Suddenly, he had a high fever at the end of April. At first, he thought he had caught a cold by accident and took some antipyretics on his own, but the effect was not obvious, so he treated at a clinic near his home. After hanging antibiotics for five days, not only did the symptoms not improve, but also severe chest tightness, wheezing, and lips gradually turned purple.
"After admission, the patient's respiratory distress further increased." Guo Tao, deputy director of the emergency department of Jiangsu Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, introduced that although he was immediately given symptomatic treatment such as oxygen inhalation and antibiotics, he was quickly transferred to the emergency EICU ward, but the patient's blood oxygenation It continued to decline. During this period, I went to non-invasive ventilator and tracheal intubation one after another. The patient still panted very badly and was already in severe respiratory distress.
At the same time as the treatment, doctors are actively looking for the cause. "Patients have been treated with antibiotics for about a week before admission, but pneumonia has not been controlled. Then it is likely that it is caused by some unconventional pathogen infection." Introduction of the bed doctor Yang Tingwen.
In order to find out the cause as soon as possible, in addition to antibiotic treatment and routine etiological screening in the hospital, the doctor also performed fiberoptic bronchoscopy to collect alveolar lavage fluid for second-generation sequencing of the metagenomics after intubation. Identify the cause.
Three days later, the results of genetic testing showed that Li Zhang was infected with the rare "Chlamydia psittaci".
"Chlamydia psittaci infection", also known as "Parrot fever", is a very rare disease. "Parrot fever" chlamydia is mainly spread and infected between a variety of birds, accidentally transmitted to humans by the carrier animals, generally does not occur from person to person.
Guo Tao introduced that when humans inhale the air containing Chlamydia psittaci, especially those with weak immunity, such as frail and elderly people, they can contract the disease. People who keep birds or have close contact with poultry are most susceptible to "Parrot Fever".
"Although the patient does not keep birds, but because the neighbors keep pigeons, there are often pigeons landing on the balcony of his home, and intimate contact with them is indispensable, it may be related to this." Guo Tao said.
After clarifying the cause, the doctor immediately adjusted the corresponding antibiotics, and changed from empirical treatment to targeted treatment. The indicators of the elderly improved significantly. After experiencing rehabilitation treatment, offline, extubation, etc., it took nearly a month for the patient to finally relapse He was healthy and discharged from the hospital.
Experts say that patients infected with "Parrot Fever" present two extremes, either with little or no symptoms, or with severe clinical symptoms, such as chills, fever, cough, and chest pain, and severe respiratory failure and life-threatening. (Finish)