Whooping Cough

Pertussis, or whooping cough, is a contagious infectious disease that primarily occurs in children, caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis. Pertussis is characterized by coughing fits seizures. The incubation period of this disease usually lasts five to fourteen days. The disease is divided into three periods or phases: 1) catarrhal, 2) seizures or paroxysmal, 3) and resolution.

Catarrhal stage may begin tórpidamente, children are cranky, lose their appetites and happening now cold, effusion of mucus, wheezing, hoarseness cough. Cough up the intensity and within two weeks of seizures usually alleges period, with coughing paroxysms where children face a dark red, swollen and there labiros thick and foamy sputum. After the climax, the child was temporarily replaced until the next coughing fit. By moving period of seizure increases the frequency of paroxysms and the number of repetitions and felt by auscultation sibilant rales and rhonchi. Phase seizure does not end in a fast, but through a gradual decrease or resolution period, when children take three to five weeks of paroxysmal cough. In the resolution phase paroxysms stop night and day became less frequent, lasts up to four weeks.

Complications mainly bronchopneumonia, which occurs when inflammatory lesions of the mucosa larynx, trachea, and major bronchi, small bronchi and bronchioles spread. Bronchopneumonia characterized by a sudden rise in temperature, prostration, anorexia, dyspnea and tachycardia.

Treatment: erythromycin, but it is effective when given in the first stage.