Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Jason Gale On Swine Flu Lung Damage

 

# 3783

 

 

Jason Gale, who writes regularly on pandemic flu issues for Bloomberg news, brings us news of a study from doctors in Australia and New Zealand who have been treating severely impacted Swine flu cases over their winter flu season.

 

Although the novel H1N1 virus normally remains in the upper airway and results in common flu-like-symptoms, on rare occasions it can infect deep into the lungs, and the result can be severe respiratory distress or even failure.

 

Doctors there have dubbed this phenomenon as FLAARDS (Flu A-Associated Acute Respiratory Disease Syndrome).

 

Follow the link to read the entire Bloomberg report.

 

 

Inflamed, Flooded Lungs Trigger Death by Swine Flu, Study Says

By Jason Gale

Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Swine flu is most dangerous when it causes the lungs to become inflamed, flood with fluid and fail to function, doctors in Australia and New Zealand found.

 

 

While a majority of people infected with the virus have a mild illness, a small number develop life-threatening disease, intensive-care specialists Steven Webb and Ian Seppelt said. The doctors described the most common of three main complications from the pandemic strain as flu A-associated acute respiratory disease syndrome, or “flaards.”

 

“Flaards -- sometimes with associated multiple organ failure -- is the most common syndrome and has the highest attributable mortality,” Webb and Seppelt wrote in an editorial in the September issue of the medical journal Critical Care and Resuscitation.

 

(Continue . . . )