Chagas disease: morbidity profile in an endemic area of Northeastern Brazil

Epidemiological and clinical profile of patients with Chagas disease in the Central-North area of Paraná, Southern Brazil

“…Furthermore, most patients tend not to live in the same place throughout their entire lives, and considering that cases of chronic CD are not of compulsory notification, public health services often fail to provide appropriate assistance to these patients. The prevalence of cardiovascular manifestations found resemble those reported in other publications 10,12 .…”

“…This can be partially explained by most patients (60%) being older than 65 years of age, who present comorbidities with other chronic diseases, besides the genetic composition of both the patient and the parasite that can influence the clinical manifestations of CD 4 . Different data were found by other researchers who described the predominance of the indeterminate form 3,12 or of the cardiodigestive form 13 . Age acts as a risk factor associated with the development of Chagas heart disease and the transition from the indeterminate form to cardiomyopathy generally occurs in a slow and progressive fashion, affecting 2-3% of patients each year 14 .…”

Clinical and epidemiological characteristics of Chagas disease in an endemic area of Sergipe State, Brazil

“…Although some authors 13 consider a megacolon diagnosis based only on clinical criteria because of the difficulty of conducting contrast radiography and because it is an uncomfortable exam for the patient, the frequency of constipation was 12.6% in this study, and of these, only 2.8% presented megacolon on contrast radiography. However, we identifi ed a prevalence of 15.4% of megacolon in the studied population (71 participants submitted to this test), which is similar to the prevalence reported by Andrade et al 14…”

Epidemiological features, echocardiographic findings, and parasite load in patients with Chagas disease

“…However, these depend on the type of study and the predominant clinical forms. Other studies have generated different results; Pereira et al 18 and Andrade et al 35 respectively detected electrocardiographic abnormalities and changes in 48% and 10.8% of patients.…”

“…Echocardiography is a valuable tool for evaluating patients with CD, as it can assess cardiac function and structure, which complements information obtained by electrocardiography. Because ventricular segmental contractility in patients with CD is associated with disease progression, echocardiography has been routinely applied in survival studies [34][35][36][37][38] . Left ventricular apical aneurysms are found in about 2% of patients with CD, and in 24% of patients with electrocardiographic abnormalities 34 .…”