Core Tip: The annual Spring Festival is approaching, and it's finally time to set aside work and gather with family and friends. However, you should be careful not to let this peaceful atmosphere be disrupted by sudden illness. What are the high-incidence diseases during the Spring Festival? What first aid measures can be taken to relieve pain or save a life if you encounter them?
Common Illness 1: Cardiovascular and Cerebrovascular Diseases
According to statistics from major hospital emergency rooms in previous years, we find that the period around the Spring Festival each year is a peak time for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, with the elderly accounting for the largest proportion. During the Spring Festival, many potential factors can trigger these diseases. For example, the cold weather can cause the body's blood vessels, especially the coronary arteries, to contract and spasm easily, leading to insufficient blood supply and potentially causing embolism. The festival also makes it easier to over-consume high-fat, high-calorie foods, increasing lipid levels in the blood and making it thicker, which can cause heart attacks, strokes, and other diseases. During the long holiday, when friends and family gather, activities like playing cards or Mahjong, which can be exciting, are often used to pass the time. These activities can easily cause the elderly to become overly emotional, leading to a faster heart rate and higher blood pressure, which may trigger sudden strokes or heart attacks. Young people should not let their guard down either. The over-excitement of the holiday, severe lack of rest, coupled with numerous social engagements and excessive consumption of tobacco and alcohol can all increase heart rate and blood pressure, easily inducing coronary heart disease and cerebral hemorrhage.
Symptoms and Countermeasures: 1. If fainting occurs, lay the patient flat in a ventilated place, elevate their lower limbs, and have them drink sugar water or apply strong pressure to the patient's Hegu point (the webbing between the thumb and index finger). If consciousness is not restored, take them to the hospital immediately. 2. After a hypertensive patient has an episode, comfort them to stay calm and have them lie down in bed. Administer antihypertensive medication immediately. If the patient suddenly experiences a severe headache accompanied by vomiting, and even disorientation and limb paralysis, lay the patient flat with their head turned to one side to prevent vomit from being inhaled into the respiratory tract. 3. When a heart disease patient has an episode, loosen any tight clothing around the neck, chest, and waist. Keep the patient warm, and if necessary, cover them with a blanket or clothing. Do not shake the patient or splash them with ice water to try to wake them up, and do not let them eat or drink.
Common Illness 2: Acute Gastroenteritis
During the festival, the daily routines of many families are completely disrupted. Playing cards, sightseeing, and visiting relatives and friends become the main activities, and meals become irregular. This can lead to skipping meals or overeating, and consuming very cold or very hot food, which severely weakens gastrointestinal function. Alternatively, eating at unclean food stalls that contain pathogens and toxins can cause acute inflammatory changes in the gastrointestinal mucosa.
Main Symptoms: Nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, fever, etc. In severe cases, dehydration and shock can also occur. Generally, for patients with acute gastroenteritis, nausea and vomiting come first, followed by diarrhea, which can range from 3-5 times to dozens of times a day.
Countermeasures: Once the above symptoms appear, the patient should try to rest in bed while taking oral glucose-electrolyte solutions or homemade salted sugar water to replenish lost fluids. If vomiting persists or diarrhea is severe, seek medical attention immediately for relevant examinations and intravenous fluid therapy. At this time, the patient should eat light liquid or semi-liquid foods to ease the burden on the gastrointestinal tract.
Common Illness 3: Alcohol Poisoning
During the Spring Festival, gatherings with friends and family inevitably involve toasting, and excessive drinking is the direct cause of alcohol poisoning. Every year during the festival, many people are treated in hospital emergency rooms for alcohol poisoning.
Main Symptoms: In addition to vomiting, alcohol poisoning patients may also be talkative, have slurred speech, and clumsy movements during the nervous excitement phase. When the poisoned person enters the coma stage, they generally show a pale face, purplish lips, cold and clammy skin, decreased body temperature, dilated pupils, rapid pulse, and slow breathing with snoring sounds.
Countermeasures: When gathering with friends and family, remind each other to drink slowly and, more importantly, not to drink on an empty stomach. If someone becomes agitated from excessive drinking, never use sedatives, and do not try to induce vomiting by stimulating the throat with a finger, as this will increase intra-abdominal pressure, causing duodenal contents to reflux and potentially triggering acute pancreatitis.
Common Illness 4: Upper Gastrointestinal Bleeding
Gastrointestinal bleeding caused by ulcers or chronic liver disease is also one of the main gastrointestinal diseases before and after the festival. Almost all new cases have a history of attending various banquets for consecutive days.
Among these patients, many were previously unaware that they had ulcers or liver disease. During the cold Spring Festival, the body's blood vessels constrict, reducing blood supply to the gastrointestinal mucosa, causing the ulcers or liver disease to manifest. If diet is not controlled at this time—eating too much, consuming excessive high-protein foods like fish and shrimp, or drinking too much alcohol—it is very easy to cause gastrointestinal bleeding.
Furthermore, if the patient happens to have a cold and takes some antipyretic and analgesic drugs that damage the gastric mucosa, the condition will become even more serious. For patients with chronic liver disease, excessive social engagements can lead to physical and mental exhaustion and improper diet, which can easily trigger liver failure, liver necrosis, and a high probability of life-threatening ruptures of esophageal and gastric varices.
Main Symptoms: Vomiting coffee-ground-like substances or passing black stools may indicate gastric bleeding.
Countermeasures: Upper gastrointestinal bleeding is very dangerous and requires immediate medical attention.
Common Illness 5: Acute Pancreatitis
The modern diet is already rich in fat and protein, and the Spring Festival is the biggest holiday of the year. Excessively greasy foods are concentrated on the dining table, and the stimulation of alcohol on the gastrointestinal mucosa can cause pancreatic edema, leading to acute pancreatitis. Acute pancreatitis, which has a very dangerous onset, can be considered the most typical "holiday disease."
Main Symptoms: Upper abdominal or left upper abdominal pain that appears one to two hours after a meal and radiates to the left waist and back, accompanied by fever, nausea, vomiting, and shock symptoms such as a rapid and weak pulse and low blood pressure.
Countermeasures: Because acute pancreatitis has a sudden and dangerous onset that can be fatal in severe cases, seek medical treatment promptly if the above symptoms appear.
Common Illness 6: Acute Cholecystitis
Overeating, excessive drinking, or consuming too much greasy food during the festival can lead to excessive bile secretion, which may trigger acute cholecystitis or an acute attack of cholelithiasis.
Main Symptoms: Acute cholecystitis is characterized by pain in the upper right abdomen that radiates to the right waist and back, and it can also be accompanied by fever, vomiting, and other symptoms.
Countermeasures: If the condition and symptoms are severe, seek medical treatment promptly.
Common Illness 7: Peptic Ulcer Perforation
If you have a history of peptic ulcers and overeat during the Spring Festival, it is very easy to trigger an ulcer perforation.
Main Symptoms: Sudden onset of severe upper abdominal pain, abdominal muscle tension, obvious tenderness and rebound tenderness, and often accompanied by nausea and vomiting. Some people may also show symptoms of shock.
Countermeasures: Seek medical attention promptly, as surgical treatment may be necessary.
Common Illness 8: Cat and Dog Bites
Many families now like to keep pets like cats and dogs. During the New Year, with many people around, pets can easily get frightened and hurt people. Therefore, when visiting relatives or friends who have pets, you might be scratched or bitten by a cat or dog.
Main Symptoms: Generally, children are most easily bitten by cats and dogs, and the face is the most common site of injury.
Countermeasures: After being scratched or bitten by a pet, immediately wash the wound thoroughly with large amounts of soap water repeatedly to minimize the invasion of the virus. Regardless of whether it's a cat or dog bite or scratch, it is essential to receive a rabies vaccine injection as soon as possible, within 24 hours.