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Poliomyelitis (/ ˌ p oʊ l i oʊ ˌ m aɪ ə ˈ l aɪ t ɪ s / POH-lee-oh-MY-ə-LY-tiss), commonly shortened to polio, is an infectious disease caused by the poliovirus. [1] Approximately 75% of cases are asymptomatic; [5] mild symptoms which can occur include sore throat and fever; in a proportion of cases more severe symptoms develop such as headache, neck stiffness, and paresthesia.
The U.N. agency estimates that 1 in 200 polio cases results in permanent paralysis, usually of the legs. Among children who are paralyzed, up to 10% die when their breathing muscles are paralyzed.
Many paralyzed polio patients lay in plaster body casts for months at a time. This prolonged casting often resulted in atrophy of both affected and unaffected muscles. [6] In 1940, Sister Elizabeth Kenny, an Australian bush nurse from Queensland, arrived in North America and challenged this approach to treatment.
Most infections are asymptomatic; a small number cause a minor illness that is indistinguishable from many other viral illnesses; less than 1% result in acute flaccid paralysis. This article lists people who had the paralytic form of polio. The extent of paralysis varies from part of a limb to quadriplegia and respiratory failure.
In the early 1950s, before Salk’s vaccine, polio outbreaks caused more than 15,000 cases of paralysis each year, the CDC said. After the vaccines — there are two: trivalent inactivated ...
Aug. 13—As improbable as it initially sounded last month, polio just might be making a resurgence across the U.S. and the world. To understand what that means emotionally, as well as clinically ...
Post-polio syndrome (PPS, poliomyelitis sequelae) is a group of latent symptoms of poliomyelitis (polio), occurring in more than 80% of polio infections. The symptoms are caused by the damaging effects of the viral infection on the nervous system and typically occur 15 to 30 years after an initial acute paralytic attack.
The first patient treated this way was a 12-year-old girl named Vivi Ebert, who had bulbar polio. The iron lung now has a marginal place in modern respiratory therapy. Most patients with paralysis of the breathing muscles use modern mechanical ventilators that push air into the airway with positive pressure. These are generally efficacious and ...