Definition:
Pertussis is popularly called whooping cough. This is a very highly contageous disease that caused by Bordetella pertussis bacteria. Pertusis is one of the top causes of vaccine-preventable deaths with most deaths occuring to very young infants who are unvaccinated or who are not completely vaccinated.
Diagnosis:
Diagnosis is dome be physicians by listening to the way the patient coughs and by examining the blood of the patients. Laboraty methods used in diagnosis will include culturing of the nasopharyngeal swabs on a Bordet-Gengou medium, immunofluorescence, polymerase chain reaction, and serological methods.
Treatment:
Treatment for pertusis includes administration of an effective antibiotic like erythromycin or azithromycin. This will shorten effectively the infectious period of the disease but don't alter the outcome of the disease. In time though when treatment is administered on catarrhal stage the symptoms will be less severe. Erythromycin, clarithromycin, and azithromycin are used in America to treatment pertussis while trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole is usually used when the three medicines is not effective.
Symptoms and Signs:
Pertussis that occurs mostly in infants and some young children initially manifest itself by symptoms of mild respiratory infection like cough, runny nose, and sneezing. After sometime, the somewhat mild cough changes and now has an increased number of coughing which is followed by a "whooping" sound. It may then be follwed with vomiting. Some complications of Pertusis includes pneumonia, pulmonary hypertension, encephalitis, and secondary bacterial superinfection.
Causes:
Pertusis is caused by a bacterial infection of the Bordetella pertussis.
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