Acute Respiratory Diseases

Acute respiratory diseases can be viral infections which get complicated due to bacterial super infections which develop after a viral infection. During such case, the illness can be for a long time and cannot be considered acute and can be infectious. Such respiratory diseases give rise to frequent illnesses which are experienced by many people around the world. Young kids of age five and seven face this illness every year, with the fall in the frequency with increasing age. Adults face two types of illnesses every year. It has been noticed that among adults, women have a superior frequency of respiratory disease as compared to men and women who cannot work outside home have more common illnesses than others who do. This shows that children are responsible to spread the illness in the family.

Severe acute respiratory diseases are nothing but respiratory illness resulting due to virus. Such type of disease was first reported in Asia in 2003. Later it spread worldwide for several months before the outbreak ended.

Such disease can even result to death whose symptoms can be:

• Headache
• A dry cough
• A high fever
• Pneumonia
• Body aches

Viruses Affection Respiratory System

Due to different viruses that contain RNA and DNA, respiratory infections or diseases occur. The necessary virus is rhinovirus which is the frequent cause of cold. The wide variety of viruses contains both RNA and DNA, which cause acute respiratory diseases. The most important viruses are listed in Table 1. Rhinoviruses are the most frequent cause of common cold. It travels all the year with some other viruses and is responsible for major illness of the respiratory system. There are different types of virus that result in the outbreak of rhinovirus which is different from typical outbreak of infectious disease. It has been noticed that children are responsible to spread different types of virus in schools and then transfer this virus to other family members as well.

Corona virus is another agent that carries common cold. Scientists had the problem during laboratory working with these viruses, as the regular ways to detect the virus did not show complete results.

Acute respiratory disease can be treated by mechanical ventilation in Intensive Care Unit which is usually derived through oro-tracheal intubation whenever prolonged ventilation is considered unavoidable. The individuals can be at the risk of having the disease like pulmonary contusion, atypical pneumonias and major surgery patients. Proper antibiotic therapy should be followed when the microbiological culture results are available. Following the treatment mentioned by the doctor is necessary.

Diagnosis

To diagnose the acute respiratory disease, plain chest x rays are enough to prove the bilateral alveolar infiltrates in many cases. Other than this, CT scanning shows accurate results and images of pulmonary parenchyma. It also has few utility in clinical management of patients and is a necessary tool.

Prevention

Preventing cold can be difficult and impossible as the viruses causing it are highly infectious. But you can follow some steps to reduce the spread which involves:

• Washing hands frequently, especially after touching the nose or before handling food.
• Disposing of used tissues properly
• Covering the mouth and nose while sneezing
• Maintaining hygiene

Statistics

It has been found out that acute respiratory disease has been spread around 94,037 000 and 3.9 million deaths. It is among the leading cause of death in kids under 5 years, but diagnosing it is difficult and uncertain. The community studies of child mortality depend largely on verbal autopsies, which are unreliable to diagnose such kind of infection. It also results to some other life-threatening diseases life measles. Nearly 62% of all deaths are due to acute respiratory infections; however, they are still related with measles. If death due to measles is excluded, the proportion falls to 24%.