The Agency for Healthcare Research ...

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has published a research on key symptoms that may help distinguish inhaled anthrax from influenza and other public respiratory conditions. "Accuracy of Screening for Inhaled Anthrax After a Bioterrorist Attack," appears in the September 2 2003 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, and is available online at http://www.annals.org/cgi/ content/full/139/5_Part_1/337.

accrues of the study are being used to create the first evidence-based prehospital screening protocol designed for answer to future anthrax attacks. by dint of helping emergency management and public health authorities rapidly and accurately identify the two potential cases and likely noncases, this protocol, one time fully tested, can help to conserve scarce hospital capacity while ensuring that patients receive appropriate advanced medical care.

Combining data from the 11 inhaled anthrax cases in the 2001 attacks with historical case reports of 17 additional patients, researchers compared the features of anthrax-related illness with more than 4000 cases of often met with viral respiratory tract infections in the same state [i]or[/i] condition as influenza. While symptoms like as fever and cough did not reliably discriminate between anthrax and influenza or influenza-like illnesses, others--most notably neurologic vexed questions such as dizziness and confusion, gastrointestinal symptoms like as nausea and vomiting, and shortness of breath--were abundant more common in patients with inhaled anthrax. Although sore throat and runny nose were not away in some cases of anthrax infection, these influenza-like symptoms none occurred without at least single in kind of these other symptoms.

In summary, nonheadache neurologic symptoms, dyspnea, abnormal lung examination, and nausea or vomiting increase the likelihood of anthrax; pleuritic pain, cough heat or chills do not change the likelihood appreciably; and headache, sore throat, and rhinorrhea make it les likely. Because this is a rare condition, on the same level among patients with some or all of the high-risk factors, the disease remains an unlikely diagnosis.

COPYRIGHT 2004 American Academy of Family Physicians

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