 | Joseph P. Galichia, MD is the founder and Medical Director of the Galichia Medical Group, PA. He is an internationally recognized pioneer in the field of interventional cardiology. In the 70's, Dr. Galichia studied in Zurich, Switzerland with the inventors of the balloon angioplasty technique for treating heart disease. As a result of his experience, he was able to bring this historic technique back to the United States where he was one of the first physicians to perform coronary angioplasty here. A noted medical spokesman, he appears on a weekly Newstalk segment on KWCH Channel 12 and has a weekly syndicated radio talk show on KNSS 1330 AM every Saturday live from 11:00 am to noon. Dr. Galichia may be contacted by sending an e-mail to service@galichia.com |
Health & Medicine
2008-01-01 11:17:00
It’s not to late to get your flu shot!
I failed to get a flu shot and I think the flu season is too far underway. Should I go ahead and get the shot now or simply pass on it? Also, I’m convinced that several times in the past I’ve actually gotten the flu from the flu shot. What should I do?
Answer: My best recommendation is to get the flu shot immediately. We have yet to see a flu epidemic in this region and getting this shot now will likely give you immunity to contracting the flu. The flu shot is imperative in my opinion for all adults and everyone over the age of six months with rare exception. I feel that failing to get the flu shot could result in you getting influenza and running the risk of pneumonia or other complications that could result in death. There are thousands of people every year in this country that die from “garden variety” influenza, most of them because they did not get a flu shot. There are some myths regarding flu shots, myth number one, being that a person will actually get the flu from the flu vaccine. The flu vaccine used today is a dead virus and there is no way that a person can get influenza from the flu shot. Some people do however experience some symptoms of nausea, vomiting, and aching muscles but it is not the flu and will not turn in to a life threatening illness. A second myth surrounding the flu vaccine suggests that since flu vaccines are grown in eggs, this processing method can actually give a person “bird flu”. This dreaded illness is not transmitted in anyway by the flu shot and in fact, has occurred only because of a rare mutation enabling this virus to spread to humans. This spread has occurred from infected chickens to humans and these were live chickens, not through eating poultry or eggs from the chicken. A third popular myth implies that since the flu vaccine is formulated so far in advance, how do we know it will be effective against the strain we’ll be fighting during peak flu season? Truth of the matter is, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and companies that make flu vaccine have been extremely effective in predicting which virus will spread in epidemic fashion. Thus they’ve been amazingly good forecasting which virus’s to protect against. The fourth myth centers around healthy people. The thought here is that healthy people don’t need a flu shot. This is absolutely not true. In fact, the flu spreads through healthy people as fast as it does through elderly people within our population. It is true that older people have more serious complications with the flu but certainly young children and any healthy person can die from influenza. The great flu epidemic of 1918 killed many very young people and in many instances, an entire family was wiped out due to the flu virus. Myth number five, flu vaccines given to young children can cause autism. Scientists became very excited in the 1990’s when there seemed to be a link between autism and the flu vaccine but there is simply no scientific evidence to support this. Groups of thousands of children have been studied in multiple countries and no link has been established thus far.
The reasons for getting a flu shot are overwhelming. Getting an annual flu shot is one small bullet to bite for the amount of protection you will receive from taking this precautionary measure.
