Chagas Disease: Cause, symptoms, and when should you visit a doctor?

Chagas ' disease is an infection transmitted by blood - dealing insects known as the triatomine on which Trypanosoma cruzi is caused. She was named after Brazilian physician Carlos Chagas, who discovered the disease in 1909.

If not treated, it can cause major heart problems but also problems of the digestive system, and it can eventually lead to death.

Chagas ' disease is transmitted by contact with the dung or urine of an infected insect. Triatom transmits parasites and usually lives on the walls of houses, warehouses, or chickens in rural areas. They are active at night and attack their victim with a blow, during which they store waste. The affected person then spreads it further into his skin or mouth and nose and then the infected waste enters his blood.

In addition, in some cases the parasite may be transmitted by food containing the parasite by transferring infected blood but also by transmitting the infected mother to the newborn child and by transplanting an infected organ.

How to Know Chagas ' Disease

This disease has two stages. In the acute phase, which lasts from several weeks to several months after the infection itself, symptoms are easy and hard to spot. The first signs are changes to the skin. The purple swelling of one eyelid. You may also have:

fever

Headache

pale skin color

Expanded lymph nodes

Inhale or chest pain

Breathing Challenges

At this stage, the most important thing is killing drug parasites, and the symptoms will withdraw. If this phase is not addressed, a chronic phase occurs.

The second phase occurs ten to twenty years after the infection begins, in which parasites attack the heart and the digestive system. At this stage it is too late to kill the parasite, but symptoms are treated instead. About 30 percent of patients develop heart disorders, and 10 percent of them have problems with the digestive system. Heart disease or even heart failure may occur several years after infection.

When do you need to visit a doctor?

If you have traveled to America, where this parasite is located and you have shown some of the symptoms, you should visit a doctor. It is important to inform your doctor of your previous trip. Diagnostics are done on the basis of blood tests, a thin or thick stain. An examination of certain affected organs, such as lymph nodes, can also be carried out.

How is Chagas ' disease treated?

The most important thing is killing and removing parasites from the body in the acute stage, which is achieved by drugs, nifurtimox, or benznidozol. In the chronic phase, treatment is symptoms - more precisely the treatment of symptoms. Thus, heart - control drugs, heart stimulaters, heart transplants, or digestive operations are used.