Bio-terrorism is one of the country's biggest post-9/11 concerns. How fast doctors can detect an agent of bio-war may determine how many people will be affected. 7 Healthcast reporter Dr. Deanna Lites shows us a new tool physicians are using to make the right call, quickly.
They're diseases we simply don't see, but they are the latest in the weapons of bio-terrorism. The key to protecting the public as the final line of defense is early diagnosis. That's where an E.R. based computer program called VisualDx comes in.
"You can go in and put in a patient symptoms, you can describe what the rash looks like, what part of the body it is, how old the patient is," Dr. Lewis Kohl, of the department of emergency medicine at Long Island College Hospital, said.
Then, the list and images of possible illnesses comes up. Name the rare disease that could potentially be a bio-weapon, and the program has it. For example, if a doctor is thinking it could be anthrax the signs and symptoms appear along with images.
While doctors in emergency rooms are trained in bio-terrorism, they don't see ricin or smallpox every day, if ever, and it can be hard making the diagnosis.
"The scary part of smallpox is they come in and they look like the flu, they don't have a rash for the first two days," Dr. Kohl said, "you can't be wrong if you think someone has small pox, because as soon as you start using that word you're going to get police involved and FBI and departments of health…And your hospital is going to be closed off. So you want to be pretty sure before you pull that alarm."
This diagnostic tool costs around $10,000. The cost can make it difficult for hospitals to acquire on their own.
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