Symptoms of jaundice are expressed in staining yellow (hence the name) of the skin and sclera. This is due to an excessive amount of a substance such as bilirubin. It accumulates in the blood. Patients with jaundice often have yellow palms. In healthy people, this substance is excreted along with the contents of the digestive tract. Otherwise, the liver is not able to metabolize bilirubin, and it remains in the body.
What to do if palms turn yellow?
When diagnosing jaundice, it should be remembered that it is necessary to identify the root cause of the disease, and not to treat a change in skin color, so that yellowed palms do not need to be hidden or try to mask. And the reasons can be different: these are problems with the liver, spleen, pancreas, blockage of the bile ducts.
The main symptoms, as mentioned above, are yellowing of the skin, staining of urine in a dark brown color, it can become like tea. The stool becomes patchy, white, or extremely pale in color. Patients develop a fever, chills, and pains in the upper right abdomen may also appear. Due to the disease, loss of appetite, a significant weight loss, can also develop. For any of the listed symptoms, you must urgently consult a doctor.
Very often jaundice occurs in newborn children, this is due to the fact that the baby’s body is not yet working at full strength and some organs, such as the liver, are not yet able to completely process the substances entering the body. The kid has yellow palms. As a rule, the “jaundice”, as it is called in the hospital, disappears after a few days, when the baby begins to adapt to the world. If jaundice has not disappeared, then this can lead to serious consequences, at least to anemia, and at the very least to serious lags in the mental and physical condition.
Jaundice is divided into several types, depending on how the pathological process proceeds: suprahepatic jaundice, subhepatic and hepatic. The first type occurs when a patient is diagnosed with a hereditary or acquired disease called hemolytic anemia. In this case, the breakdown of red blood cells rises sharply. Subhepatic jaundice occurs in violation of the metabolism and movement of bilirubin between cells. It is usually diagnosed with diseases such as cirrhosis, Gilbert's syndrome and various forms of hepatitis. Hepatic jaundice most often occurs due to damage to the pancreatic head by cancer cells or due to cholelithiasis.
To minimize the risk of jaundice, you must follow some recommendations. Firstly, do not eat in those establishments in which sanitary standards and hygiene rules are not respected. Secondly, when taking all kinds of medications or with intramuscular injections, it is extremely careful to observe the dosage and very strictly - the recommendations of the attending physician. If, in the case of taking medications, minimal signs of jaundice, especially yellow palms, were noticed, you should urgently consult a doctor for advice and a change of medication.
During treatment of jaundice, a decrease in yellowness of the skin and mucous membranes may be observed, but this does not mean that the treatment is over. Even if the yellow palms do not bother you, this is not a reason to relax. It’s just a period of improvement. When diagnosing jaundice, the doctor must necessarily conduct a complete diagnosis of the liver, up to its biochemistry, and also make mandatory general and biochemical blood tests. During treatment, surgical intervention may be required, especially relevant if cancer cells are to blame for such a disease.