Gastrointestinal Infections

Abstract

Gastrointestinal infections are a very important cause of morbidity in the United Kingdom and a very important cause of morbidity worldwide. The incidence of specific gastrointestinal infections is rising, even in Britain in the 1980s, but investigation and subsequent notification of a patient with a gastrointestinal infection occurs in only a small proportion of patients presenting to the general practitioner. Diarrhoea may be the major work of the few large infectious diseases units in the United Kingdom, but many of the people who suffer from the increasingly recognizable infections do not even contact their general practitioner, let alone end up in hospital. The identifying of the patients who should be investigated and the even harder selection of those who need hospital admission will be mentioned specifically with each infection. Isolation of the patient from family and friends is seldom justified, providing personal hygiene is good, but if the physical condition or social circumstances of the patient merit hospital admission, isolation facilities should be sought, particularly if profuse diarrhoea is the problem. Vomit is seldom infectious.