Existing comment:
Korean War
Another Front: Contending with a Mysterious Disease:
As the opposing forces in Korea settled into trench warfare in June 1951, hospitals began admitting patients with a mysterious set of symptoms. Patients complained of high fever, headache, and mild depression. Red spots appeared on their arms and trunks. They drank heavily due to thirst, but despite administration of intravenous fluids to prevent dehydration, they got worse. Their skin became flushed as their capillaries dilated and their body temperatures and blood pressure dropped. As they went into shock, their vision blurred and they slipped into delirium, convulsions or coma.
Confronted with an unexpected epidemic, military doctors mobilized to better understand what became known as Epidemic Hemorrhagic Fever. Drawing on clinical research conducted in Korea and Japan, doctors found that hemorrhagic fever profoundly affected kidney function and the blood vessels' ability to retain plasma -- with often fatal results. Consequently, they developed a new treatment approach that greatly restricted the amount of water given early in the course of the disease, in order to minimize a buildup of fluids in the body. This new approach, which seemed counter-intuitive, drastically improved outcome.s By 1952, the fatality rate from cases of Epidemic Hemorrhagic Fever in Korea had plummeted from twenty percent to less than five percent. |