Dengue most common reason for ICU admissions post-monsoon:

Dengue, encephalitis, scrub typhus and malaria were the major reasons for admission of patients in several ICUs at different hospitals across the country, a study has claimed.

The multi-centric observational study of 34 ICUs on 456 critically-ill adults and children with non-localising fever was conducted from July 2013 to September 2014, the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital (SGRH) here today said.

"More than half (58.7 per cent) of the patients got admitted during the post-monsoon season (August-October)," it said.

The study has been conducted by researchers from the SGRH; PGIMER, Chandigarh; CMC, Vellore; PGIMS, Haryana; Sanjivani Super-speciality Hospital, Ahmedabad; Apex Hospital, Bhopal; PGIMS, Rohtak and Jeevan Rekha Critical Care, Jaipur, the SGRH said in a statement.
 

"Dengue, scrub typhus, encephalitis and malaria are the major reasons for ICU admissions of tropical fever patients in the ICUs," the statement said.

It also found that dengue was the most common reason, followed by scrub typhus, encephalitis, malaria and bacterial sepsis, for ICU admissions during post-monsoon season from August-October, the study claimed.

The study has been published in the December 2017 edition of Indian Journal of Critical Care Medicine.

According to Dr Prakash Shastri, co-author of the study and Vice-Chairman, Department of Critical Care Medicine at the SGRH, "Tropical fevers are caused by a number of viruses, bacteria and protozoa and often get transmitted by an insect bite."

"The challenge lies in clinically diagnosing them at the time of presentation as they often present as undifferentiated fever and with overlapping signs and symptoms," he said.

Laboratory confirmation may not be available or reliable in the first few days. Regardless, it is important to treat these patients early as delay leads to increased complications and increased hospital stay and expenditure, he said.

"Hence, we conducted this nation-wide study to identify the prevalence, reasons and utilisation of ICU resources and outcome of a patient with tropical fevers in Indian ICUs," Shastri said.