Letter to the Editor: Acute Renal Failure in the Fatal Cases of Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever, a Summary in Thai Death Cases

Abstract

Dengue infection is an important mosquito-borne infectious disease. This disease is common in the tropical countries, especially Southeast Asian countries. A severe form of dengue infection called dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) requires hospitalization. Thrombocytopenia and hemoconcentration are the hallmark of the DHF. Renal involvement in DHF has been reported. These renal complications can be classified on the basis of their clinical and pathologic characteristics into acute transient reversible glomerulonephritis, chronic progressive irreversible glomerulonephritis, and amyloidosis. [1] In the most severe cases, the acute renal failure (ARF) can be seen. [1] However there are only a few reports concerning its magnitude. The author analyzed the magnitude of the ARF among the death Thai DHF cases. The author performed this mini-study in order to document the magnitude of the level of ARF among reported Thai fatal DHF cases. A literature review of the papers concerning ARF among reported Thai fatal DHF cases was performed from the database of the published works cited in the Index Medicus and Science Citation Index and also the published works in all 256 local Thai journals, which are not included in the international citation index. The reports that did not contain complete data were excluded for further analysis. According to this review, there were four reports [2 – 5] covering 51 Thai fatal DHF cases from total 6154 DHF cases. Of the fatal cases, 17 cases had ARF, giving an incidence rate equal to 33.3% among fatal DHF cases and 0.3% among all DHF cases. Here, it can be said that the ARF is an important fatal complication in DHF and prevention of ARF by proper DHF management is important.