The whole process after rabies attack is generally not more than 6 days, according to the course of the disease can be divided into three phases: prodromal phase, excitation phase and paralytic phase, with different symptoms.
1. Prodromal stage: The prodromal stage usually lasts 2~4 days, and non-specific symptoms such as low fever, fatigue, headache, nausea, general malaise, irritability, etc., can occur after being stimulated by sound, light, wind and other stimuli, such as laryngeal constriction can occur. Some of them may have abnormal sensations such as numbness, itching, pain, ants sensation and so on in the bite wound and peripheral nerve innervation area, with relatively high specificity.
2. Excitement period: generally lasts for 1~3 days, manifested as high excitement, extreme fear, fear of water and wind and other symptoms, especially for water is very fearful of seeing, hearing or drinking water can cause severe spasm of the throat muscles, serious cases of the whole body muscles can appear twitching, respiratory muscle spasm can cause dyspnea and cyanosis. Some people may have hallucinations and other mental disorders.
3. Paralysis: generally lasts for 6~18 hours, in this period, the patient’s muscles are no longer spasmodic, and the whole body will be paralyzed, and the excited state will be changed to a quiet coma, and finally the patient will die because of the respiratory and circulatory failure.
Rabies is a very high mortality rate of infectious diseases, once the onset of mortality is close to 100%, no effective treatment, therefore, in the animal scratches or bites should be timely injection of vaccine, if necessary, also need to inject anti-rabies virus immunoglobulin.