How do public health officials seem to know exactly how many cases of salmonella are out there? Today the Washington Post claims a strangely precise 1,017. What are the symptoms? How is it diagnosed? Is it always serious enough to require medical care? I am thinking that there are lots more people who might have it without symptoms serious enough to see a doctor about, but that finding those people would provide a huge amount of information about the source.
My bottom-line question is that I am wondering why we don’t see articles that say, “If you have the following symptoms, even if you don’t feel sick enough to see a doctor, please report them to your local health authorities or your doctor to help us track the salmonella outbreak.”
Simple answer: they do not. The numbers you see reported are confirmed cases. The majority of bacterial enteritis cases resolve without medical intervention.
To add to the above, salmonellosis is a reportable disease in many (if not all) states – that is, if it is definitively diagnosed in a person, the health professionals involved are obligated to report the case to the health department.
I have had salmonellosis (caught it from a horse that I was caring for, won’t bore you with the gross details), and it sucks the big one. Better than cancer, but that’s about all I can say for it, besides the weight loss effects.
Missed a couple questions in the OP:
It is diagnosed with a fecal culture and/or PCR.
It does not always require medical care, since antibiotics do not shorten the course of the disease very much and may prolong shedding. Anti-emetics and IV fluids may help keep you alive/less miserable while you wait for it to run its course.
My doctor decided to let me tough it out sans fluids or anti-emetics, but that is more a story for the Pit than GQ.
Yuuch. Equine Salmomellosis sucks big time. Profuse diarrhea shooting like a fire hose. I once saw a stable worker catch the spray into her face and she was hospitalized around 5 days later. :eek:
The Ohio State University by any chance? The University of Pennsylvania’s large animal facility has an isolation barn that deals primarily with Salmonella cases. Blecch.