DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2020.v08i08.029

Pages: 1932-1935

Background: Enteric fever is a common public health problem in Bangladesh and it involves multiple symptoms. Enteric fever presents with variable clinical scenario. Objective: The aim of study was to evaluate the clinical spectrum of enteric fever in children. Methods: A prospective study was done in the department of Paediatric Infectious Diseases and Community Paediatrics, Dhaka Shishu (Children) Hospital, Dhaka, Bangladesh during the period from January 2018 to December 2018 who were clinically suspected to have enteric fever and had either a positive blood culture for Salmonella or a positive Widal test. Results: This study included 133 patients out of which 71 were males and 62 were females. The majority of patients were under 5 years. The age distribution of study population in depicted in table I and the sex distribution in Table-2. The most common presenting symptoms in our study was fever (97.0%), abdominal pain (39.8%), vomiting (39.1%), diarrohea (36.1%), and the common symptom was constipation (18.8%) as depicted in table III. The most common physical findings was coated tongue (74.4%), followed by toxic look (63.9%), pallor (51.9%), abdominal distension (15.0%), abdominal tenderness (13.5%), Rose spots (14.3%), hepatomegaly (16.5%), splenomeagly (3.8%), and jaundice (4.5%) as depicted in Figure-1. Complications were present in nine patients (6.77%), Pneumonia was present in five patients (3.76%), hepatitis in three patents (2.25%) and encephalopathy in the patient (0.75%) as shown in Table-4. Conclusions: Enteric fever is a common public health problem with fever as most common presenting symptom. Culture yield can be increased in enteric fever by drawing blood culture prior to administration of antibiotics. Ceftriaxone is highly efficacious as monotherapy in enteric fever.