New Delhi: Mucormycosis or ‘black fungus’ infection is a type of fungal infection. It’s relatively rare, but also very serious. Formally known as zygomycosis, this infection tends to occur most often if you have weakened immunity from an illness or health condition.
Symptoms
Some of the symptoms of his disease include headache, toothache, and more. Here’s a list of a few signs that you may have Mucormycosis.
- Pain and redness around eyes and/or nose
- Fever
- Coughing
- Shortness of breath
- Bloody vomits
- Co-morbidities – post-transplant/malignancy
- Predisposition
- Uncontrolled diabetes mellitus
- Immunosuppression by steroids
- Altered mental status
- Prolonged ICU stay
- Voriconazole therapy
How to prevent Mucormycosis
– Use masks if you are visiting dusty construction sites
– Wear shoes, long trousers, long sleeve shirts and gloves while handling soil (gardening), moss or manure
– Maintain personal hygiene, including thorough scrub bath
The disease can be managed by controlling diabetes, discontinuing immunomodulating drugs, reducing steroids and extensive surgical debridement- to remove all necrotic materials, according to the advisory.
DOs
– Control hyperglycemia
– Monitor blood glucose level post-COVID-19 discharge and also in diabetics
– Use steroid judiciously – correct timing, correct dose, and duration
– Use clean, sterile water for humidifiers during oxygen therapy
– Use antibiotics/antifungals judiciously
Don’ts
– Do not miss warning signs and symptoms
– Do not consider all the cases with the blocked nose as cases of bacterial sinusitis, particularly in the context of immunosuppression and/or COVID-19 patients on immunomodulators
– Do not hesitate to seek aggressive investigations, as appropriate (KOH staining & microscopy, culture, MALDI-TOF), for detecting fungal etiology
– Do not lose crucial time to initiate treatment for mucormycosis
Management of Mucormycosis
- Control diabetes and diabetic ketoacidosis
- Reduce steroids (if the patient is still on) with an aim to discontinue rapidly
- Discontinue immunomodulating drugs
- No antifungal prophylaxis needed
- Extensive Surgical Debridement – to remove all necrotic materials
- Monitor patients clinically and with radio-imaging for response and to detect disease progression
Comments are closed.