URT Infections

Hello everyone,

This week in lecture we covered upper respiratory tract (URT) infections. URT infections are very common and unfortunately they have been a constant staple in my life. However after lecture, I realized I didn’t know as much about them as I thought. For starters, infections such as the common cold, thrush, sinusitis, croup, pharyngitis are all URT infections. Also, pharyngitis is the formal name for soar/strep throat and as simple as that sounds, that is something that I didn’t know. There are many organisms that cause pharyngitis such as viruses, Streptococcus pyogenes, and Arcanobacterium haemolyticum, however Streptococcus pyogenes causes 15-35% of those infections.

At some point in our lives we’ve all headed to the doctor complaining of a soar throat and received that awful, gagging swab of the throat and tonsils, with that huge cotton swab. That process is called a throat culture and as awful as it is, it is a vital tool used in diagnosing pharyngitis and isolating Streptococcus pyogenes. This week in lab we were able to work through that diagnostic process. We received a throat swabs, we performed rapid tests, we cultured the swabs, made preliminary identifications and performed confirmatory test on organisms that were isolated from culture, and report our findings in a final report. Lab this week was a lot fun to say the least.

In closing, the lecture/lab combination is ideal for me in learning infectious disease. I get such a deeper understanding when I can apply the knowledge I’ve obtained.

　

Until next time, check out the images below, comment, and post!

Thanks for reading!!!

 

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