Influenza: symptoms

Influenza is an acute disease with a short incubation period (from 10-12 hours to several days).

The flu always begins acutely. There are typical symptoms of influenza: a feeling of weakness, aches in muscles and joints, chills. The temperature can rise from subfebrile to hyperthermia for several hours, reaching a maximum in the first day of the disease. The severity of the fever reflects the severity of intoxication, but these concepts can not be fully identified. Sometimes, at high temperature, signs of intoxication are poorly expressed (often in young people who have caught the flu caused by the A-H1N1 influenza virus). Hyperthermia is short-lived, and subsequently the disease proceeds with an average degree of severity.

The duration of the febrile period is 2-5 days, rarely up to 6-7 days, and then the temperature decreases lytically.

The first symptoms of influenza are a headache, which is the main sign of intoxication. Headache is usually localized in the frontal part, especially in the region of the superciliary arches, sometimes has a retroorbital character. In elderly people, the headache is often diffuse. Its severity varies, but in most cases it is moderate. A severe headache in combination with insomnia, hallucinations, repeated vomiting occurs in patients with a severe course of the disease, often accompanied by a meningeal syndrome. In adults, unlike children, convulsive syndrome develops rarely. During a painful dry cough, combined with vomiting, there are very severe pain in the upper sections of the rectus muscles and intercostal muscles on the line of attachment of the diaphragm to the chest.

Catarrhal syndrome is the second leading syndrome in influenza (in most patients it is represented by tracheitis), but often recedes into the background. In some cases this syndrome is weak or absent. The duration of the manifestation of catarrhal syndrome is 7-10 days, the cough lasts longer. The mucous membrane of the nasopharynx is dry, hyperemic, edematous. Swelling of nasal conchae makes breathing difficult. Rhinorrhea in the early days is meager or absent, later there are serous, mucous or succulent discharge from the nose. From the first day of the flu, perspiration and dryness occur behind the sternum. Mucous back of the pharynx is hyperemic and dry.

Tones of the heart are muffled, sometimes systolic murmur is heard at the top. A third of patients develop a relative bradycardia, in 60% of patients, the pulse corresponds to body temperature. Sometimes a tachycardia is detected. Persistent tachycardia in the midst of the disease gives an unfavorable prognosis, especially in people of older age groups with chronic heart, vascular and respiratory diseases. In patients with influenza, a decrease in blood pressure is detected. In patients with hypertensive disease in the period of convalescence, the development of a hypertensive crisis is possible.

The tongue is densely coated with a white coating, not thickened. The appetite is reduced. The presence of a dyspeptic syndrome against the background of fever and intoxication excludes the presence of influenza and is caused by the development of another infectious viral disease (enteroviruses, rotaviruses, norvolc viruses) or bacterial etiology. The liver and spleen with the flu are not enlarged. Violations of urination with uncomplicated form of influenza do not occur.

With uncomplicated influenza, leukopenia often occurs with eosinopenia and neutropenia with a small stab stem leftward, as well as relative lymphocytosis and monocytosis. The degree of leukopenia is directly proportional to the severity of toxicosis. ESR in most patients is normal. When X-ray examination of the lungs in an acute period of the disease, an increase in the vascular pattern is revealed.

[1], [2], [3]

Classification of influenza

Symptoms of influenza can vary significantly depending on the age of the patients and the state of their immune system; serotype of the virus, its virulence, etc.

Allocate:

• uncomplicated influenza;
• complicated flu.

According to the severity of the current,

• lung;
• of moderate severity;
• heavy.

Sometimes they give off a lightning flu. The severity of uncomplicated influenza is determined by the severity and duration of intoxication.

[4], [5], [6],

Complications of influenza

Pneumonia is one of the frequent complications of influenza. Developed against the background of a viral infection, pneumonia is referred to as the primary viral-bacterial (most commonly streptococcal and staphylococcal etiology). They are more often developed in patients of the "high risk" group: with chronic diseases of the lungs and the heart, the elderly. Staphylococcal and pneumococcal pneumonia in the presence of severe toxicosis, characteristic of influenza, is difficult to diagnose. Staphylococcal pneumonia is characterized by a "creeping" nature and propensity to destruction of the lung tissue.

Postgrippoznoe pneumonia, developing at the end of the 1 st - the beginning of the 2 nd week of the course of the flu, is easier to diagnose. Antibiotic treatment gives good results. Pneumonia can have both interstitial and focal character. Postgrippoznoe pneumonia is dangerous for people of older age groups. In such patients, the disease can proceed as a pseudobloreal discharge pneumonia.

Lightning-fast form of influenza with severe course can result in death on 2-3 days (develops acute hemorrhagic edema of the lungs against the background of severe intoxication). From the first hours there is a high fever, dyspnea and cyanosis rapidly increase. There is a lot of bloody, sometimes foamy, phlegm. On the radiographs identify foci of dimming round or irregular shape. Muting of percussion sound is absent or slightly expressed. In the days that follow, against the background of high fever and sudden dyspnea, ND increases. Develop a hypoxic coma and collapse.

A severe complication of the flu is edema of the brain. It is characterized by: severe headache, vomiting, deafness, loss of consciousness, increased blood pressure, breathing loss, bradycardia, meningeal syndrome, stagnant phenomena of the fundus.

Frequent complications of influenza are sinusitis and otitis; pyelonephritis and pyelocystitis occur less often. Other complications are possible: diencephalic syndrome, meningoencephalitis and asthenovegetative syndrome. The severity of the course and outcome of the disease is affected by concomitant chronic pathologies and neuro-endocrine disorders.

[7], [8], [9], [10],

Mortality and causes of death in case of influenza

The flu has a lethality, which does not exceed 1-2%. Severe symptoms of influenza may indicate such conditions: brain edema, hemorrhagic pulmonary edema, acute vascular insufficiency.