UMEM Educational Pearls

Category: Pediatrics

Title: Coxsackie Virus Infections

Posted: 6/14/2013 by Rose Chasm, MD (Updated: 4/25/2024)
Click here to contact Rose Chasm, MD

  • enterovirus which lives in digestive tract, and is highly contagious
  • outbreaks worse in summer and fall, but is a self-limited illness
  • causes mild flu-like symptoms such as fever, headache, muscle aches, sore throat. with fever usually lasting less than 3 days
  • hand, foot, and mouth disease: syndrome of painful blisters in oropharynx and plams of hands and soles of feet
  • herpangina: painful blisters in oropharynx, usually posterior in location
  • hemorrhagic conjunctivitis: eye pain with injected conjunctivia
  • serious complications include: viral meningitis and encephalitis, myocarditis, and secondary bacterial infections

References

Pediatrics Text 19th edition, Nelson