Correlation of Clinico-Hematological Parameters in Adult Dengue with Survival and Death: Emphasis on Cause of Mortality

Abstract

Objective: Dengue is a systemic and dynamic disease ranging from asymptomatic seroconversion to severe dengue with hemorrhagic and organ impairment. Although many reports exist on clinical and hematological aspects, surprisingly there are no articles that take in to account these parameters in people who have survived and succumbed to the illness in a matched cohort study with healthy controls from an endemic region. The present study is carried out with this objective. Patients and Methods: This was a retrospective study conducted at Father Muller Medical College Hospital, a tertiary care hospital, at Mangalore, Karnataka from January 2017 to December 2019 to compare the clinico-hematological parameters in the adult patients diagnosed with dengue fever. The data collected were entered into Microsoft Excel, and statistical analysis was done by Student’s t-test. P < 0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Results: A total of 429 patients were included in the study, with 274 (63.87%) males and 237 (55.24%) patients belonging to the age group of 18–30 years. The most common symptoms were fever (100%), vomiting (96.04%), and headache (36.83%). The dengue patients had leukopenia, lymphocytosis, monocytosis, thrombocytopenia, raised erythrocyte sedimentation rate, and hematocrit. In addition to this, the deceased dengue patients (27) had deranged liver and renal parameters compared to alive. Conclusions: The results suggest that when a patient presents with fever, persistent vomiting, thrombocytopenia, and raised hematocrit, dengue fever should be the first differential diagnosis, especially in endemic area. Furthermore, the elderly and people with comorbidities are at high risk of death if medical care is delayed.