I guarantee all of you out there have
had some sort of pharyngitis before it's
a very common illness and in fact it's
so common it can be referred to as the
common cold but the common cold includes
more than just pharyngitis the common
cold can spread to rhinitis laryngitis
so on and so forth and so there's all
these names there's these different
names for a part of the body that is
infected by either a virus or bacteria
okay so let's break this down when we
look at the word pharyngitis we can
break it down into a prefix and a suffix
the suffix is itis and itis means
inflammation or swelling and faron's
first ooh the pharynx which is an
anatomical word for essentially just the
back of your throat so when I break it
down it's inflammation and swelling in
the back of the throat pharyngitis is a
location of where the infection has
spread to now to fully understand where
the inflammation is at where the pharynx
is at I want to take a side view of the
head so we can explore to something that
we can't see just by opening the mouth
so here I'm drawing a human head and
I'll exaggerate a couple anatomical
landmarks so for example this is the
palate and up here we have the nasal
passage which you'll notice connects to
the back of the throat and we have the
mouth right here and that opens into the
oral cavity and down into the throat now
the pharynx is divided up into three
parts which are actually very intuitive
based off of the anatomical location so
for example right here is the nasal
passage so the top part of the pharynx
is known as the nasal pharynx
so this is the connection between the
nasal passage and the Farex the nasal
pharynx right here we have the oral
cavity so this is called the oropharynx
and finally the bottom most portion of
the pharynx is known as the lingo
pharynx lingo refers to the larynx which
is also the voice box so this is the
area of the pharynx just above the voice
box so now we have a location to where
pharyngitis is and so viruses or
bacteria that get back here and cause an
infection
cause
irritation to the mucosa or in other
words a wet surface that contacts the
outside world so this is the mucosa of
the back of the throat during an
infection the virus or the bacteria can
cause damage to the mucosa which leads
to a variety of symptoms such as dry
throat a sore throat which leads to
difficulty swallowing coughing really
anything that you can think of that has
to do with swelling and inflammation of
the back of the throat and of course
these bugs can cause a fever - now
notice I didn't put a runny nose or
something like that and that's because a
runny nose is caused by inflammation of
the nasal mucosa but like I said since
these are just anatomical borders
infection can spread in either direction
and so you can have complications such
as rhinitis swelling of the nasal mucosa
or laryngitis swelling of the larynx or
the voice box so if a bacteria or a
virus is virulent enough it can continue
to spread and cause more infection now
if the infection becomes severe enough
it can cause inflammation of lymph nodes
those are the glands in the neck the
lymph nodes are just centers where the
immune system houses a lot of white
blood cells what happens is white blood
cells in the throat once they realize
there's an infection they'll travel to
these lymph nodes and alert other white
blood cells to become active and this
recruits the immune system to help fight
off this infection now who are the
actors the major culprits that cause
pharyngitis well most commonly
pharyngitis is viral the viruses that
usually cost pharyngitis are the viruses
implicated in the common cold and also
other viruses that can cause pharyngitis
are viruses that cause mononucleosis
mononucleosis also known as mono or in
layman's terms the kissing disease a lot
of teenagers end up getting mono and
this is primarily caused by either EBV
which is epstein-barr virus or CMV which
stands for cytomegalovirus these two are
very contagious viruses and so it's
easily passed in the
of teens now while we're talking about
it teens and kids are the population
that are most commonly affected by
pharyngitis adults get it less
frequently and that's because well one
young adults and children are still
developing their immune system and have
not been exposed to a lot of these bugs
before and - especially in kids they're
notorious for grabbing things and
touching each other and then touching
themselves and so this easily passes on
infective material to the child so
viruses are a common cause of
pharyngitis but there's also bacteria
the most common bacteria in pharyngitis
is known as streptococcus pyogenes this
is also commonly referred to as group a
strep a being the specific type of
streptococcus so those group b group c
group a strep is specifically
streptococcus pyogenes and even more
commonly this is called strep throat now
the bacteria is dangerous because it
causes more serious infections but also
if not treated with a full course of
antibiotics patients may develop some
bizarre complications and these
complications may arise much later after
the infection maybe two weeks after the
infection patients may have a fever they
may also experience joint pain in their
elbows knees or really any joint and
more seriously patients may develop
heart problems and this heart damage can
cause issues for the rest of their life
patients may also have some weird
strange shaking movements they may do
some weird dancing movements they may
develop a rash high blood pressure and
very scary for a parent they may also
urinate blood now these are different
conditions for example the weird
movements the heart issues and the joint
problems are from rheumatic fever and so
this is why it's important to treat
patients who have developed strep throat
with a full course of antibiotics it's
to make sure that they don't develop
some of these bizarre complications now
these complications can be very rare but
because it's unpredictable as to who
will develop these complications it's
important for patients to take a full
course of antibiotic
if strep throat is suspected