Wilderness Medicine: Travelers Diarrhea Treatment

Dr. Donner discusses the best treatment options for traveler's diarrhea and addresses prophylactic antibiotics. This is video 3 of 5 on travelers diarrhea.

MedWild provides wilderness medicine, wilderness survival, and search and rescue instructional videos on a variety of topics: high altitude illness, traveler’s diarrhea, shoulder dislocation and reduction, shelter building, bushcraft, space blankets, hypothermia, medical kits, survival kits, frostbite, snake bites, fire craft, ropes and knots, orthopedic injuries and sam splints, cold water immersion and more.

Instructor: Howard Donner, MD
Co-Author “Field Guide to Wilderness Medicine”
Served as a physician for Denali National Park, Himalayan Rescue Association, and the 1998 NOVA Everest expedition. Served as a medical operations consultant for NASA for over 5 years. Whitewater rafting guide, commercial pilot, and certified flight instructor.

Recommended Audience: Outdoor enthusiasts and health care professionals including physicians, nurses, search and rescue teams, EMT, paramedics, ski patrol, corpsman, guides, instructors, wilderness first responders, and anyone else interested in educational and “how to” videos on wilderness emergency medicine, travel medicine, search and rescue, expedition medicine, backcountry first aid, wilderness survival training, and military medicine. Dr. Donner’s draws on his extensive backcountry and travel experience to highlight key signs, symptoms, treatments, and improvised techniques and skills.

More from MedWild:

Produced by Kyle Allred PA-C

Please Note: MedWild Videos are for educational purposes and not intended to replace recommendations by your health care provider.

[MedWild]

See the instructor in this video (Dr. Howard Donner) give presentations and teach a variety of hands-on workshops at the upcoming National CME Conferences on Wilderness Medicine.

[rominapuga]

thanks you saved me in Peru.It was inexpensive and easy to find and it worked like a charm!

[Pipsqwak]

My mother got HACE at high altitude in Colorado. We'd spent nearly a week at altitudes ranging from 10, 000 to 13, 000 feet and thought nothing of it because we'd lived in Leadville for many years decades ago, and my parents had always lived in high-altitude mining towns in the mountains. She didn't get nauseated, but she had a headache, got more and more confused and disoriented, had ataxia (she staggered and had a wide, unsteady gait while walking and had to be supported), was uncoordinated and unable to dress herself, and had frank hallucinations. She was also lethargic, falling asleep and difficult to arouse. When finally aroused, she would only respond to questions in monosyllables. My dad thought she was having a stroke, but as an RN, I thought the symptoms were more like HACE and knew that we had to descend quickly from the remote area we were in and get her to a hospital. Sure enough, when we got her down to 5, 000 feet, she seemed to recover completely. I still had her checked out with an MRI at the nearest hospital ED to make sure she had not had any kind of brain infarct. She's 80 and had a hemorrhagic stroke due to an aneurysm years ago, , from which she had recovered well. But cerebrovascular disease can make one prone to problems at altitude. She's now forbidden to visit our old haunts in Colorado.

[MedWild]

Thanks for the comment. Please see the MedWild video "Traveler's Diarrhea" for some tips on determining the difference. Determining if medication is authentic can be very difficult. Typically no way to tell without a lab.

[mandlin]

I went to Morocco last week and on the last Saturday my stomach felt solid, suddenly Sunday there I woke up feeling awful and glued to the toilet, it was literally liquid.

Most of the time I felt ok - just kinda fatigued and bloated. Then suddenly I kept getting extremely painful cramlp - like so painful it felt like I couldn’t breathe painful, and then run to the toilet with 5 mins warning and liquid again.

It’s now 2am the night before I go back to work, and I thought I was doing ok. I have had some liquid and mild cramps. I went to go to bed at 00:00, got a cramp. Went the toilet, the cramps got severe again and I have spent 2 hours between cramps and water - not much of it but enough that I have to stay on the toilet - you can’t sleep in your own watery poop.

I’m ok 80% of the time but when it hits me (around every 5 hours) it’s bad and I get little to no warning when it will hit me. I don’t know if I should phone in sick, if I can get to a toilet in time and don’t cramp for 2 hours I’m fine lol. But I can’t work if I do get like what I just got now, as I said it’s not constant it’s just every few hours and it can range from mild and done with within 10 mins to 30mins-hours of cramps and liquid. Ugh!

[arthurtorres]

Doc thank you very much. How about Cipro and Tinidazole together? Do they work for the same condition?