Influenza is one of the most invasive and contagious respiratory diseases that winter brings with it and in 2024, it has been even more so. When we have not yet reached the most critical months, the infection curve only seems to keep rising, seriously affecting risk groups including older adults, people with underlying illnesses, children and infants under 1 year of age. of life.
But, there are those who, without being part of these segments, have suffered complex respiratory conditions and health personnel have not been exempt from this. The infectious disease doctor and intensivist at the Dr. Gustavo Fricke Hospital of the SSVQP, Marcos Huilcamán, It is one of them. He was infected with influenza last April, and despite being vaccinated, the disease affected him to the point of requiring hospitalization.
“Two weeks after being vaccinated, I became infected. Obviously I still did not have a sufficient level of antibody to be able to defend against influenza and the truth is I never imagined that I would have reached a situation as complex as the one I was in. I’m a guy who does sports, I eat pretty well, I control myself pretty well in general. And suddenly living the other experience, the other side, of being hospitalized and almost on the verge of intubation is something quite complex to assume”. The internist said that he also never thought he would be a candidate for such a complex scenario.
“I was hospitalized in the Intensive Care Unit for about 7 days with the risk that this could have progressed to something major. If I had not been vaccinated, obviously the disease would have been more serious than what happened to me. The experience is something that can touch us all, personally, I thought it couldn’t touch me and it hit me quite hard, I was quite weak for almost a month and quite compromised from a functional point of view.”
The professional who works in the Critical Patient Unit highlighted that in addition to the risk groups, influenza has also been aggressive with young people, which to date has meant regretting several deaths nationwide. “This peak of influenza this year has behaved a little differently, in the sense that the people affected are people at higher risk, there is no doubt. We have seen serious illnesses, pneumonia that requires mechanical ventilation. And in particular and in a very striking way we have seen young people, who one would never have expected to reach mechanical ventilation, or have had a serious condition, people with a fairly adequate diet and that compromises functionality, they remain compromised after the event.”
After his experience as a patient and also as a doctor, being on both sides of the coin, today he only intensifies the call to get vaccinated. “The main thing is that as many people as possible can be vaccinated. For a long time there have been people who have been reluctant to get vaccinated against influenza because of the fear that it might cause you to get the flu, and in reality that is not the case. It can break out as a temporary illness, but it is not a real flu that has a virus disease; “They are only skin reactions, or temporary secondary reactions to the vaccine that pass quickly.”
