Social media erupted into a whir of hysterical reactions to suggestive pictures shared by a physician on August 25, of a patient who was presented with symptoms of serious illness as a result of undercooked pork.
One of such cases was that of Dr Sam Ghali, who is based at the Emergency room of the University of Florida Health Jacksonville. He uploaded an astonishing picture on his X account that read “This is perhaps one of the craziest CT scans I’ve ever seen”. The scan demonstrated the patient’s legs filled with a parasites that had penetrated the tissues forming cysts.
People use this account in their professional capacity and in my case, as an emergency room physician, I educate the public about different life threatening situations, clear Dr Ghali on X. Promoting his learning aim to the audience, he asked for possible diagnosis, and after that informed that this particular patient was suffering from ‘Taenia solium. Cysticercosis.
What is Cysticercosis?
Cysticercosis is also a serious parasitic disease that occurs due to the infection with the larvae of the pork tapeworm as they develop cysts and may migrate to various body tissues such as the brain, the muscles, or even the spinal cord, causing cyst related complications. Such include swelling beneath the skin, headaches and even seizures if the infected cortical area incorporates the brain or the spinal cord. This infection is typically transmitted through handling contaminated food and water, human faecal matter containing tape worm eggs, and hand washing within the areas with an eggs contamination. This
“Ingesting the cysts found in undercooked pork, caters for T. solium infection in humans,” says Ghali. The larvae “migrate through the intestinal wall and into the circulation, and locally or systematically they can go anywhere in the body that they wish to.”
“Cysticercosis affects the health positive the outlook for the management of symptoms is often fair however some outcomes are tragic. Each year approximately 50 million of estimated cyst arachnoid patients transmissions occur worldwide approximately around increasing 50,000 deaths due to it,” Ghali said. “Approaches to the management consist of anti helminth drugs, steroids, anti convulsants and intraventricular anti parasitic drugs and surgical excision.
The infection is usually visualized radiologically as white dots, and there are those who refer to them as ‘rice grain calcifications.’ Dr Ghali emphasized that this period ranges between 5-12 weeks, within which ingested cysts can grow into advanced adult tapeworms.
“Therefore, the lesson learned from the reconstruction of the events is to try your utmost to be clean, to wash your hands, and above all, do not eat raw or even slightly cooked pork,” he Reduces such things for health care perspectives and tries to put a no to it.
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