Dengue is taking its toll in Gurgaon. Hospitals here are full of such cases and people are finding difficult to find a solution. In this situation I hope the below points would help you in case you are stuck and dont have information about anything at this moment. The experience will help you to plan in better way
1) It starts with high fever and the other symptoms are rashes, headache, backache, joint pains, vomiting, nausea, pain in stomach etc.
2) At start people mistook it as normal fever but you have to be cautious if you hear a single case in your locality.
3) You need to have CBC test in order to confirm the platelets in your blood. The count is between 1.5 to 4 lacs for normal human being.
4) You need at least two tests to confirm if the platelets are going down. Generally the rate can be a drop of above 500 platelets per hour.
5) If platelets is below 1.5 lacs then your doctor would advise you to drink lot of fluids like water, lemon water, strong coffee etc.
6) Situation is not good below 80 thousand and needs hospitalization below 50 thousand.
7) I saw cases of platelets below 20 thousand and even 15thousand but their situation was much worse. They were vomiting all the time and had pain too.
8) Below 50 you need to get hospitalized. It vary from individual to individual and hence you need to get in touch with your doctor.
9) Since hospitals is full I would suggest that you get in touch with some hospital when count is around 1 lakh. The drop is fast and gives little time to react.
10) once your platelet count is below 50 thousand then the doctor would advise you to load units of platelets. Two units are sufficient and would help you to recover.
11) The units of platelets is not same as that of blood. One unit at Paras Hospital cost Rs. 12,000 and they have 2 machines only. Another hospital is Artemis which has 1 machine. You can also check with Gurgaon civil hospital as they also have option. I am not sure about other hospitals in Gurgaon.
12) One unit of platelets has around 30 thousand platelets count. This will be given to patient so that by the time antibodies gets killed you have enough platelets. I will describe more about later in post.
13) Once the patient is given 2 units the doctors wait for recovery. Generally the whole process gets over in 3 to 7 days depending upon your body. Once platelet production starts it can even jump to about 1 lakh in single night.
14) This is not communicable and cannot spread from person to person.
Why you need platelets- The antibodies in your body mistook platelet as the dengue and attach to them and kill them. So till the time antibodies gets exhausted you need to keep supplying platelets. Two units are generally sufficient. (as told by someone is hospital)
Why units are very expensive- It is more than 1 hour process to extract platelets from blood through a machine and hence it is expensive. The machine takes blood and extract platelets . The whole unit is replaced for each patient which makes it an expensive process. Paras two machine is running 24 hours a day for last 2 weeks and still there is a waiting of 8 hours.
Do you get platelets from Blood Bank- You get concentrate from blood bank which is generally contains 2 to 3 thousand platelets. Hence it is advised to get live donor. When all blood bank refused one blood bank came to help which was White Cross, A-60, East of Kailash, Delhi . This blood bank gave 2 units. They need 1 unit of blood for each unit of platelet along with Rs. 1000. The cost is high if you cannot give blood. My advise is to be prepared from start and keep live donors ready.
Be alert and do things in time to avoid problems for patient. Dengue has no cure, only prevention and platelets can help. It is caused by mosquito which bites you at day time and generally in lower part of body. You can drink lot of fluid like water to ensure your platelets production is high.
2 comments:
Thanks dear , your blog is really very informative,
Post a Comment