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Can you be immunized against tetanus?

Not only can you be immunized, you most definitely should be. Children are given a vaccine against this serious disease with their first series of injections and then are given a booster dose as they start school. Older people may have escaped vaccination and should ask their first doctor to give them one, since they will otherwise be at a much greater risk of infection. If you have been vaccinated you should have a booster dose about every 5 years. When people go to a casualty department with wound of various sorts they are often given a booster. The vaccination is actually against the toxin, or poison, rather than the bacteria that make it, since it is the toxin that causes all the trouble.

Is it true that tetanus paralyzes you so that you can hear everything around you but you can hear everything around you but you can’t move or speak? No. Tetanus is caused by a toxin that acts directly on the nervous systems. The effects of the toxin are to produce both a generalized rigidity of muscle-leading to ‘lockjaw’, a name sometimes given to the disease-and to produce generalized spasms. These spasms can be exhausting and even fatal if they occur frequently. In order to prevent them, sedation is used. If this fails then the patient may be deliberately paralyzed with drugs and have his or her breathing taken over by a ventilator.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at 1:48 am and is filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.