Abstract
Background: Enteric fever, commonly known as typhoid fever is a global public health problem. It is one of the common infectious diseases of humans, fever lasting for more than 7 days. It is transmitted by faecooral route and common in the areas with poor sanitation. Globally, majority of the Typhoid fever is caused by Salmonella enterica var typhi, one fifth of the infection is caused by Salmonella enterica var paratyphi. This study was conducted to describe clinical and laboratory parameters among children with enteric fever.
 Methods: It was a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted in the Pediatric ward and Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) of Nepal Medical College Teaching Hospital (NMCTH), Atterkhel, Kathmandu, Nepal from 2015 January to 2015 December. Inclusion criteria: clinical details and laboratory parameters of children aged 13 months to 15 years old with diagnosis of enteric fever was obtained in the proforma and descriptive statistics were calculated.
 Result: A total of 1,020 children with the sign and symptom suggestive of enteric fever were admitted in the inpatient department (Pediatrics) during the study period. All the enteric fever suspected children were tested for blood culture, Widal test and complete blood count, out of them 80 children were diagnosed as enteric fever. Male female ratio is 1.6:1. Fever was the most common clinical feature observed in 95% cases and other common features were loose motion (37.5%), vomiting (33.8%) and abdominal pain (27.5%). Hepato-splenomegaly is common finding of Enteric fever reported in 85.0% and 43.7%. Majority of the patients had normal leucocyte count (71.0%) and leucopenia reported in 20.0%.
 Conclusion: Fever and hepato-splenomegaly were the major clinical presentation of typhoid fever in our study. Other less common features were loose motion, vomiting and abdominal pain. This finding may be useful for the pediatrician and other health professionals for the early diagnosis of enteric fever.
Highlights
Enteric fever is a global public health problems, and over 21 million are getting infected and 0.2 million people are died annually.[1,2] Almost 90% of the cases were from Asia.[3]
Other less common features were loose motion, vomiting and abdominal pain. This finding may be useful for the pediatrician and other health professionals for the early diagnosis of enteric fever
We included all pediatric patient admitted in pediatric ward and Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) of the Nepal Medical College Teaching Hospital (NMCTH), age ranging from 13 months to 15 years who was having fever and symptoms suggestive of Enteric fever and investigated them with Blood culture, Widal test and complete blood count urine and stool analysis
Summary
Enteric fever is a global public health problems, and over 21 million are getting infected and 0.2 million people are died annually.[1,2] Almost 90% of the cases were from Asia.[3] The trend of enteric fever prevalence is increasing worldwide, in 2010 the prevalence of enteric fever was higher in African countries (724.6/100,000) than in Asian countries (170.8/100,000).[4] In 2015, it was estimated 17 million cases of typhoid and paratyphoid fever with highest affected people seen in South Asia and other areas were Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.[5,6]. Commonly known as typhoid fever is a global public health problem. It is one of the common infectious diseases of humans, fever lasting for more than 7 days. It is transmitted by faecooral route and common in the areas with poor sanitation. This study was conducted to describe clinical and laboratory parameters among children with enteric fever
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
