Dengue kills elderly man from Hadapsar

PUNE: A 70-year-old man from

Hadapsar

died of

dengue shock

syndrome on January 7, opening the account of the disease casualty in the city this year.

The deceased, of Ramtekdi in Hadapsar, had the onset of illness from December 21. He had

fever with chills

, cough with expectoration. He developed breathlessness on December 24, following which he was admitted to Sane Guruji hospital two days later.

“The man had tested positive for

dengue

antibody test IgM, a confirmatory test for dengue. His condition was critical at the time of admission. He suffered a heart attack, following which he was moved to Inamdar hospital on December 27. He succumbed to dengue shock syndrome with multi-organ failure on January 7,” a doctor from Inamdar hospital said.

Most forms of dengue are self-limiting and vary from relatively mild increase in body temperature to classic, incapacitating fever. However, in rare occurrences, complications occur in the form of dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF) or dengue shock syndrome (DSS), experts said.

“When dengue gets complicated, it progresses to DHF and then DSS. The chances of cross-infection, or subsequent infections by two strains, can be the reasons behind the severity of the cases,” internal medicine expert Abhijit Joshi of Joshi hospital said.