Laboratory and Etiological Profile of Febrile Thrombocytopenia Cases- A Cross Sectional Study

Abstract

Introduction: Fever is a symptom which is caused by a variety of illnesses and it usually occurs in response to an infection or inflammation. Patients presenting with fever in tropical country like India usually have an infectious etiology and many have associated thrombocytopenia. Common causes of febrile thrombocytopenia include infectious etiology like, dengue, malaria, typhoid, Leptospirosis etc. Such study was not conducted before in the given region to know various causes of febrile thrombocytopenia, so this study was done. Aim: To evaluate the laboratory and etiological profile of patients with febrile thrombocytopenia in patients admitted to Sapthagiri institute of medical sciences and research centre (SIMS, RC) Bangalore. Materials and Methods: A cross sectional study was carried out on 580 patients aged > 18 years admitted to medicine ward, SIMS, RC, Bangalore between the period AugustOctober 2015. Results: From the 580 patients studied, the commonest infectious etiology was dengue (48.28%) followed by septicemia (19.83%) and typhoid fever (15.52%). Among 580 cases, 376 cases (64.82%) were males and 204 cases (35.18%) were females. The most common age group affected was between 18-30 years. Among 280 cases of dengue, 91 cases showed leucopenia and 60 cases showed deranged liver function tests. In malaria, 4 cases showed features of thrombocytopenia with leucopenia and 1 case showed icteric hepatitis. Conclusion: The uncommon causes of severe thrombocytopenia in our studies included DIC, septicemia, UTI, apart from usual causes like dengue, malaria and typhoid fever. All the cases of febrile thrombocytopenia should be evaluated and subjected for detailed platelet studies, as it is a very important basic investigation to establish the correct diagnosis and also to prevent fatal outcome from the disease

Keywords

• dengue
• infections
• platelets
• seasonal variation