Patient's question:
My colleague's daughter has been more than a month old, but recently she has been crying frequently and has great difficulty feeding. When she went to the hospital for a check-up, the doctor said the child had neonatal tetanus. I would like to know what are the common causes of neonatal tetanus?Doctor's answer:
The main cause of neonatal tetanus is the failure to use sterilized scissors to cut the umbilical cord during delivery, or the doctor's hands being unclean during delivery. It could also be due to neglecting the disinfection of the umbilical cord after birth. Tetanus can cause generalized muscle contractions, and the heart rate may become very fast, with elevated blood pressure. A one-month-old infant repeatedly crying and having difficulty feeding was diagnosed with neonatal tetanus at the hospital. This is an acute and severe infectious disease characterized by trismus and generalized muscle rigidity, caused by the invasion of Clostridium tetani into the umbilical cord, which produces toxins.