Tick bite
Tick bite is a very common nuisance among lovers of outdoor activities, fishing, hunting. Ticks are carriers of many diseases, some types of ticks are also poisonous. In America, there is such a tick, the bite of which causes loss of appetite, hearing loss, muscle weakness, movement disorder, muscle paralysis. The complex of these symptoms is referred to as tick-borne paralysis. The most common disease carried by ticks in Russia is summer — spring encephalitis, or as it is also called inflammation of the brain. This disease is infected by a tick when it bites a sick animal. The disease penetrates into the human body not only with a direct bite, but also with the use of products obtained from infected animals.
Encephalitis manifests itself a week or two after infection with the virus. It is accompanied by severe headache, frequent vomiting, fever and chills. On the 3-5 day of the disease, weak paralysis occurs in the neck, shoulder girdle, the lower part of the bitten body is affected quite rarely. If the virus has begun to spread actively, then there are coughing, violation of swallowing function, sometimes respiratory and cardiac disorders. Often, the patient has severe itching of the skin, tissue damage around the bite site.
CAUSES OF TICK BITE
Most often, ticks live in forests and fields, and they bite the place where they feel blood and heat, that is, open areas of the skin. In order to avoid a tick bite in the forest, you can not wear open clothes, it is better to use special means to combat ticks. By itself, the bite of an uninfected flared is not dangerous. It is dangerous only if the tick itself is infected with the disease. Also, do not forget that ticks carry not only encephalitis, but also many other deadly diseases.
SYMPTOMS OF A TICK BITE
The tick penetrates the skin painlessly due to the release of special painkillers. Therefore, it is impossible to independently recognize a tick bite. You can see it when it crawls over the skin, touching its hairs, or when it has already penetrated the skin. Ticks prefer to bite into the popliteal fold or the fold behind the ear or neck. There they fall from the trees on a passing person. That’s why it is necessary to wear high-top shoes and a hood in the forest.
DIAGNOSIS OF TICK BITE
Unfortunately, there are no tests to determine tick bites, so it can only be detected visually. The tick is quite large, when it penetrates into the skin, its head is inside the epithelium, and the body sticks out from the outside.
TREATMENT OF TICK BITE
After detecting a tick on the skin, it should be removed as soon as possible, lubricate it with vaseline or other ointment and gently remove it from the skin. In no case should the head of the tick be left in the skin, since even after it has separated from the body, it continues to release toxins into the blood. It can also be independently embedded in the deeper layers of the skin. After separating the tick from the body, you must immediately consult a doctor to confirm or deny that you have encephalitis infection. To prevent encephalitis, vaccination of the population is carried out, if for some reason you have not been vaccinated, then gammaglobulin or ribonuclease is used to treat the virus that has already entered the bloodstream. Tick-borne paralysis does not require special treatment, but if the patient has difficulty breathing, then oxygen stimulation or immediate installation of a ventilator is required. Most likely, the cause of the manifestation of paralysis is the presence of a flared head inside the patient’s skin, it is urgently necessary to remove it. The paralysis resolves itself in a day or two after removal of the head.
