DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2015.v03i05.053

Pages: 2068-2070

Dengue is a major international health concern that is prevalent in tropical and sub-tropical countries. A hallmark of dengue fever is thrombocytopenia. The objective of the study was to assess the prevalence, severity of thrombocytopenia and its bleeding manifestations during current outbreak of dengue fever in children, which causes concern for the patients, treating doctors and the society. A Prospective study was conducted on all the laboratory confirmed cases of dengue fever during the outbreak of dengue fever from May 2015 to July 2015 among 300 children admitted to 4 major hospitals in Bangalore, Karnataka, India. The results of 300 patients studied, the prevalence of thrombocytopenia was 92%. Among these thrombocytopenic children, mild thrombocytopenia was seen in 32%, moderate thrombocytopenia was seen in 55.7% and severe thrombocytopenia in 11.5% of the cases. Among the gender and age majority of them were males 58% and in the age group of 6-10 years was 35.5%.Bleeding manifestations were noticed in 5.8% of the cases and majority of them with epitasis(2.5%).Mortality was nil in our study. This study concludes bleeding manifestations and severe thrombocytopenia are less inspite of high prevalence of thrombocytopenia in dengue fever during current outbreak. Community awareness, early diagnosis and management and vector control measures needed to be strengthened in order to reduce the increasing number of dengue cases.