Hello and welcome to the Zero to Finals podcast. My name is Tom, and in this episode I'm going to be talking to you about gastroenteritis.

And if you want to follow along with written notes on the topic, you can follow along at 0.0.orgonels.com

or in the infectious diseases section of the zero to finals medicine book.

Let's get straight into it.

Firstly, we'll start with some basic definitions.

Acute gastritis is inflammation of the stomach and presents with nausea and vomiting.

And enteritis is inflammation of the intestines and it presents with diarrhea.

So gastroenteritis is inflammation all the way from the stomach to the intestines

and it presents with nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

So really gastroenteritis is a combination of gastritis and enteritis and it involves inflammation of the

gastrointestinal system. The most common cause of gastroenteritis is viruses and these viruses are

easily spread between people and patients with gastroenteritis often have an affected family member or a recent contact who's also got

gastroenteritis. Obviously it's essential to isolate the person in a healthcare environment such as a

hospital ward as it can easily spread to other patients. So somebody develops symptoms of gastroenteritis,

put them in a side room or away from other patients so they don't

spread, and they'll need extra infection control measures like wearing gloves, washing hands,

wearing aprons and so on. Most people will recover well from gastroenteritis, but beware that

it can potentially be fatal, especially in very young or very old patients,

or those patients with other health conditions like severe heart failure.

Like we said, viral gastroenteritis is very common, it's highly contagious,

and the key causes you need to be aware of are three particular viruses.

These are rotavirus, norovirus and adenovirus.

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