With the advent of cold winter, the elderly are particularly susceptible to colds. There is a special "cold" that the elderly are prone to, which must be highly valued, and its name is "sepsis", which is often called "sepsis" by the people.
Sepsis is a systemic inflammatory response syndrome caused by the invasion of pathogenic microorganisms such as bacteria into the body, and about 18 million people worldwide suffer from sepsis every year, of which nearly 6 million people die, and the mortality rate is as high as 30%. The mortality rate of sepsis has even exceeded that of myocardial infarction, which shows how terrible sepsis is.
Lv Xuewen, deputy director of the Department of Critical Care Medicine of the Second People's Hospital of Hunan Province, introduced that the fundamental pathogenesis of sepsis has not yet been clarified, involving complex systemic inflammatory network effects, gene polymorphisms, immune dysfunction, abnormal coagulation function, tissue damage and abnormal response of the host to different infectious pathogenic microorganisms and their toxins, and is closely related to the multi-system and multi-organ pathophysiological changes of the body. Common in patients with severe infections or trauma, such as severe pneumonia, peritonitis, cholangitis, urinary tract infections, cellulitis, multiple injuries, etc. After the body is infected, bacterial toxins and other components enter the body, activate the body's inflammatory response cells, produce and release a large number of inflammatory mediators, resulting in a local or systemic inflammatory response.
The most common clinical manifestations of sepsis are fever, difficulty breathing, etc., and these symptoms are very similar to cold symptoms, so many people will mistake it for a cold at first. For the elderly, if you have sepsis, the probability of death is higher than that of the general group, so sepsis is called the last "cold" of the elderly, which shows the great harm of sepsis to the elderly.
Due to the age of the elderly, the functions of the body will decline, and any disease that occurs in the elderly may cause serious consequences, not to mention sepsis, which is a disease with a high fatality rate. Therefore, we must pay attention to sepsis in the elderly, whether it is the elderly or their families, we must improve the understanding and prevention of sepsis.
Because the symptoms of sepsis are very similar to colds, many elderly people, or family members of the elderly, are easy to ignore, but when the condition worsens further, they are often sent to the hospital, and doctors are unable to return to heaven, even if life is saved, it is easy to have many complications.
In addition, if the elderly have severe burns, multiple injuries, post-surgical conditions, and the elderly with diabetes, chronic obstructive bronchial, leukemia, aplastic anemia and urinary tract stones, family members should pay special attention, because such elderly people are often a high incidence of sepsis.
Therefore, if there are elderly people in the family, in daily life, once the elderly have chills, chills, fever, impaired consciousness, increased breathing and other manifestations, they should seek medical treatment in time, because this is likely to be sepsis, do not think that the elderly are just cold, it is best to go to the hospital system for examination. Otherwise, sepsis is likely to become the last 'cold'' in the elderly.
Contributed by: Xie Lina, Department of Critical Care Medicine, Second People's Hospital of Hunan Province (Hunan Brain Hospital).
Editor: Liu Yuchen
Image: From the Internet, intrusion and deletion