Frog-legged Children
When the side effects of benzyl alcohol were learned, local public health departments issued notices to stop its use. Actually, some hospitals had already stopped using benzyl alcohol in penicillin injection and used deionized water instead. Though the injection may be painful, it does not harm the body. But in some rural areas of Guangdong, Hubei, Hunan and Shaanxi, young children with frog-leg symptoms still appeared in large numbers after the ban of benzyl alcohol. What鈥檚 the cause?
Animal tests show that besides the use of benzyl alcohol, gluteal muscle contracture may also occur in repeated intra-muscular injection among young children.
The gluteal muscles of children are tender and small, with low absorption ability. After an injection, the medicine remains for a long time. It destroys the electrolyte equilibrium. Another cause is the mechanical destruction of small blood vessels, causing local hemorrhaging. These two factors can both lead to gluteal muscle contracture.
The immune system of children is not well developed. After weaning, the mother鈥檚 antibodies disappear quickly and the babies will be prone to bacteria attack. Before their own immune system is formed, respiratory and intestinal diseases are frequent.
In rural areas, medical services are simple, and injections are mainly intra-muscular. When a child has a fever, the parents will take him or her to the clinic to have an injection. When one injection is not effective, repeated injections are used. In the Huangtai Village, some children have 3 to 4 injections a day. The maximum number reached 9.
Undergoing such frequent injections is like setting a time bomb for the outbreak of the disease. It is also the result of a regulation which forbids the use of intravenous drips in some rural clinics. Therefore, rural doctors are forced to give successive injections to control the illness, without considering long term effects. These factors damaged the health of some children.
The disease is curable. Now they only need to make a cut 3 to 4 cm long on the child鈥檚 buttock and do a simple operation to cure the disease. The cut is made at the necrosis point, and will not cause injury to other parts.
For serious cases, besides relaxation, we will displace some tissues, to restore the function and stabilize the joints. We make a bigger cut to treat the contracture and adhesion of the muscles. Besides relaxation, the skin should also be elongated, because it is also contractured.
Editor:Liu Source:CCTV.com
