Saturday July 23, 2022 – Author:
ham
According to previous data, monkeypox is only fatal in exceptional cases. Doctors also rarely see brain and pneumonia. Nevertheless, there are serious illnesses. An infectiologist reports on the most common complications.
There is good news: most patients with monkey pox can cure their infection at home, so they do not need hospital treatment. The risk of developing brain or pneumonia or dying of monkeypox is also low. This emerges from the data available so far and corresponds to the experiences of Dr. Hartmut Stocker. The chief physician of the clinic for infectious diseases at the St. Joseph Hospital in Berlin Tempelhof heads one of the main centers for monkeypox in the capital. “Fortunately, we don’t see any very serious courses of the disease or deaths, but we do see severe courses once more and once more,” he says in an interview with Berlin Health City.
Pain and bacterial superinfections in intimate places
According to Stocker, there are two complications that bother patients and their doctors the most. One is the “excruciating pain” that smallpox causes, mainly at the entry points. “It’s often particularly bad where the infection was transmitted.”
The other is bacterial superinfections. This happens when a smallpox breaks open and bacteria enters the body. According to Stocker, the skin and soft tissue are particularly frequently affected. For quite a few patients, antibiotic treatment is not enough, “they have to be operated on so that the pus can drain off,” he says. ” The surgeon is often the best infectiologist here.”
Condoms have some protective function
Many are infected through sex, mostly between men. The intimate and anal area is therefore particularly affected by the painful and purulent complications described. This raises the question of the usefulness of condoms. Although Stocker does not believe that a condom can prevent infection, he still advises it: A condom might “protect parts of the body from a particularly bad infection that are particularly important to you,” says the expert.
Viruses find their niches
He also warns once morest blaming men who have sex with men for the current outbreak. The monkeypox virus has always been there, it just wasn’t the focus in our latitudes. “Viruses are always looking for their niches in the world,” he says. “And it is reasonable to assume that the monkeypox virus will also spread to other population groups.” He mentions HIV/AIDS as an example. “This is an absolutely heterosexual pandemic today.”
Read the full interview here.
