Caregivers should monitor children for a rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath, persistent vomiting and fatigue, as they could be signs of the “pediatrician’s nightmare” — acute myocarditis — a Taichung physician said on Tuesday.
Acute myocarditis, or inflammation of cardiac muscle tissue, is deadly and notoriously difficult to diagnose, Chia Hung Clinic resident physician Tang Tzu-han (唐子涵) wrote on Facebook.
Often caused by a viral illness, the condition affects the heart’s ability to pump blood, sometimes resulting in arrhythmia, or even shock and death, Tang said.
It is also hard to diagnose, as different symptoms arise depending on the patient’s age, she said.
Infants usually show sudden, violent symptoms, while older children often have an inflamed pericardium paired with heart failure and adolescents have chest pain and heart failure, Tang said.
None of the symptoms in children are only attributable to myocarditis, she said.
It often begins like a mild cold with intestinal distress such as nausea or abdominal pain, or it can be asymptomatic, Tang said.
The condition can worsen rapidly, leading to unconsciousness, shock or even death, she said.
Many cases have three stages, starting with regular cold or flu symptoms and progressing to signs of myocarditis such as chest pain, difficulty breathing, fatigue, dizziness and coughing blood, at which immediate medical help is a must, she added.
The third stage is characterized by paleness, fainting, low blood pressure or coldness in the limbs, and at that stage, the prognosis is usually poor, she said.
There is no cure, only palliative treatment, Tang said, adding that a ventricular assistance device or even a heart transplant are necessary in serious cases.
The prognosis for infants with sudden-onset symptoms is bad, with a death rate as high as 75 percent, she said.
Although the outlook improves with age, children are still prone to residual effects, she said.
Caregivers must pay attention to a child’s mood and appetite when they are recovering from an illness, as prolonged abnormalities are the most reliable early signs of myocarditis, Tang said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching