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Saturday, August 31, 2002Morff visited his doctor's office three times in one week. The diagnosis twice was strep throat, then a generic viral infection. "It was getting frustrating, because I knew that it was more than strep throat," says Morff, 38, who finally called the county health department and a hot line for the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, both of which urged him to get tested for the West Nile virus. Preliminary tests confirmed he has the mosquito-borne virus - the first human case of the disease in central Missouri. Morff's case makes an important point: As the West Nile virus spreads west across the United States, doctors and nurses accustomed to seeing patients with common illnesses need to start using an extra dose of suspicion, officials said. But it isn’t practical or feasible to test everyone with flu-like symptoms for West Nile virus: The Jefferson City Medical Group plans to review its treatment Morff, said Dr. Don Miller, the clinic's infectious disease specialist. But Miller said there are no West Nile screening tests that are cheap, accurate and quick. So there likely are others who had West Nile virus and recovered without ever being diagnosed, he said. "To diagnosis this early, when there's no good treatment ... is not highly encouraged," Miller said, "because we don't want to flood the health department with a lot of tests that are fairly spurious." Doctors are more likely to test the elderly for West Nile virus, because they are at a greater risk of dying, he said. I would go even further and say that we aren’t likely to test even the elderly unless they are critically ill, and the cause is unknown. There is no treatment for West Nile and the mortality is low. Why do an expensive test that won’t affect the outcome? posted by Sydney on 8/31/2002 08:36:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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