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«rare case»Shingles infection causes a man’s bladder to burst
Fortunately, such complications are rare: a man in China tore his bladder as a result of his shingles infection. But he was lucky in misfortune.
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- Fee Anabelle Riebeling
The 77-year-old suffered from shingles, which has already been treated. (icon picture)
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However, he did not go to the emergency room because of this, but because he had been having problems urinating for days. (icon picture)
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A man from China was threatened with further adversity in addition to his shingles infection (see box). He even ended up on the operating table. When it was presented, no one could have foreseen that it would come to this in an emergency. After all, the 77-year-old patient, who developed shingles at the lower end of the spine, had “only” visited him because of persistent difficulties in urinating.
During the examination, the doctors found that his abdomen was “bloated and sensitive to pain”, as the specialist journal put it «Infection and Drug Resistance» called. This is especially true in the region below the stomach. In addition, his heart rate, blood pressure, and respiratory rate were abnormally high.
The chickenpox virus is behind shingles
«Suspected bubble rupture»
The medical team ordered a CT (computed tomography).. It turned out that there was a large amount of liquid in the man’s abdomen and pelvis. “Suspected bladder rupture,” noted the doctors. The 77-year-old was then transferred to the intensive care unit. There, a catheter was inserted through which bloody urine ran continuously for three hours. Only then could the doctors look for the cause. They found a tear in the bladder nearly an inch long.
The team managed to close it operationally. The patient then had to stay in the hospital for several weeks to fully recover. Namely from the still not completely healed shingles and the bladder rupture. The rest did him good: “The patient regained full bladder function,” write the authors of the case report. The shingles had also healed.
Type 2 diabetes may also have played a role
According to Jiaguo Huang’s team at Hangzhou Normal University’s Affiliated Xiaoshan Hospital, shingles was the cause of the bladder rupture. In rare cases, the infection can lead to so-called urinary retention, in which the bladder does not empty sufficiently or not at all when urinating. The team ruled out other possible causes.
one in the «Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation» appeared report, such a complication is relatively rare, such as Livescience.com writes: In the medical center examined, it occurred in only four percent of the shingles patients. In those who developed shingles in the lower spine and sacrum, the rate was around 28 percent.
According to Jiaguo Huang’s team, the 77-year-old’s type 2 diabetes could also have played a role. Diabetes can cause nerve damage, leading to people losing the ability to sense when their bladder is full.