FREQUENCY OF ENCEPHALOPATHY IN CHILDREN WITH ENTERIC FEVER

Abstract

Objective; To determine the frequency of encephalopathy in children with enteric fever presenting at a tertiary care hospital. Patients and methods; This descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted at Department of Pediatric Medicine Services Hospital Lahore from January 2015 to December 2016. A total of 100 patients with enteric fever were recruited in our study. Results; Of these 100 study cases, 59 (59%) were boys and 41 (41%) were girls. Mean age of our study cases was 7.99 ± 3.28 years. Majority of the study cases with enteric fever i.e. 56 (56%) were age more than 7 years. Mean Temperature was 102.30 ± 0.45 F⁰. Mean disease duration (enteric fever) was 5.47 ± 1.18 days (with minimum disease duration was 4 days while maximum duration of fever was 8 days). Of these 100 study cases, 51 (51%) belonged to the rural areas and 49 (49%) were from urban territories. While majority of these children belonged to the families having poor socio-economic status 67 (67%), middle income socio-economic status was reported by 26 (26%) and 07 (7%) were from higher socio-economic status. Encephalopathy was seen in 18 (18%) of our study cases. Conclusion; Our study results have indicated that frequency of encephalopathy is high among children hospitalized due to enteric fever. Majority of our study cases belonged to poor socio-economic status families living in slum areas where poor sanitation facilities. Encephalopathy was significantly associated with disease duration, increasing age in male gender and lower age groups in female gender.

Keywords; Enteric fever, Encephalopathy, children.