Volume : VI, Issue : III, March - 2017

Children with prolonged fever attending tertiary level health facility in South India :A clinicoepidemiological analysis.

Sheeja Sugunan, Nibin Nahaz, Rajamohanan K Pillai, Santhosh Kumar A

Abstract :

 Objectives: To study the changing epidemiology in terms of aetiology and clinical profile of prolonged fever of more than 7 days duration in a tertiary care hospital during a period of 10 years. Method: All children admitted with undiagnosed fever of more than 7 days during the period January 2000 to December 2000 and January 2012 to October 2013.were included in the study and data collected prospectively. Results: 80 children were admitted during the period January 2000 to Feuary 2001and231 patients were admitted   during the period January 2012 to October 2013 with prolonged fever. Male to female ratio  was 55:45 in 2000 and 51.5: 48.5 in 2012. There were significantly (p<0.01) more children with fever duration more than 4 weeks in 2000 (33.5%) compared to 2012 (6.5%). In both groups infection was the commonest cause of prolonged fever. Dengue fever was noted to be commonest cause of prolonged fever in 2012 (33%), while enteric fever was the commonest in 2000. There were no cases of dengue or scrub typhus in 2000. Malignancy  accounted  for 5% of cases in both the groups. There was a significant decrease in the number of undiagnosed cases(p<0.01) from 20% in 2000 to 10 % in 2012 and   fever lasting for more than 3 weeks also decreased from 33% to 7%. Conclusion: Infection continues to be the commonest cause of prolonged fever in children but the etiology of  infection changes significantly in a span of 10 years.  Proportion of undiagnosed cases and fever lasting for more than 3 weeks has come down significantly over the years probably due to changing trends in diseases pattern and access to newer diagnostic modalities.

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Article: Download PDF    DOI : https://www.doi.org/10.36106/gjra  

Cite This Article:

Sheeja Sugunan, Nibin Nahaz, Rajamohanan K Pillai, Santhosh Kumar A, Children with prolonged fever attending tertiary level health facility in South India :A clinicoepidemiological analysis., GLOBAL JOURNAL FOR RESEARCH ANALYSIS : Volume-6, Issue-3, March‾2017


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