Monday, 16 April 2018

Be Familiar With Shingles Rash Symptoms

By Carolyn Brooks


Whether the information is for your own personal need or you are a caretaker, it is important to know the shingles rash symptoms. If caught early on, the length of stay can be shortened. In addition, this is often confused with other conditions, so such an awareness can help prevent exorbitant medical costs for labs and radiology charges.

This condition actually occurs as a result of the chickenpox most everyone had as a child. Once this virus is in the body, it lies in wait for decades. As we experience some biochemical changes in our older years, it suddenly sees the opportunity for a comeback performance.

Pain is generally the first thing a patient will notice. This is key because some caretakers become nonplussed when their patient complains of various aches and pains throughout the day. While this is a natural tendency for many people, it is important to pay attention to the complains your patients make in order to notice if there are any changes to their daily list of aches.

Asking patients about their childhood break out of chickenpox is an important step. Many patients will experience the pain, but never have an actual outbreak, so the etiology of pain remains a mystery. When all other possibilities for pain have been excluded, the location of the pain may allow one to give a reasonable diagnosis for their patient.

Most often the rashes are found on the torso, left or right side. In some cases it can effect the eyes, or even do permanent nerve damage. Various forms of neuralgia are known to be caused by these outbreaks, which makes them more dangerous the older the patient becomes.

If one happens to be a cancer or AIDS patient, getting to a doctor is extremely important. The impact of outbreaks for most people is minor, but for those individuals with weakened immune systems, it can be more severe. As a good rule of thumb, one who is over the age of sixty ought to see a doctor when one occurs.

This condition is also contagious and can be a problem for both pregnant women, or anyone who has not had chickenpox. If a person comes into contact with the open sores, they can get chickenpox as a result. This odd etiology for disease makes it clear the connection between the pox and these outbreaks later in life.

If one gets them soon enough, the vaccines available to help prevent outbreaks can provide some hope to many. For some it may remove any chance of an outbreak, but we have no way of knowing when that is the case. For most, it shows promise for lessening the pain and neuralgia that often occurs from outbreaks.

While many do, not every person who had chickenpox has this to look forward to. Apparently, it is the weakening of our immunity that gives rise to these outbreaks, and not everyone experiences that in old age. Perhaps the chickenpox vaccination will be able to delete this condition from the human organism for good.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment