A Study of Evaluation of Platelets as a Predictive Parameters in Severe Dengue Fever

Abstract

Introduction: Dengue fever is a common arthropod borne viral fever presenting with thrombocytopenia. There are number of study on thrombocytopenia and its correlation with severity of dengue fever, but results are conflicting. We want to study level of platelet count and its correlation with various complications of dengue like bleeding, DIC, hepatitis, shock etc. We would also like to evaluate platelet trends (increasing or decreasing) with various complication and outcome. Methods: It was prospective observational study over the period of one year. 90 Indoor patients with dengue with thrombocytopenia were studied after inclusion and exclusion criteria. Data entry and analysis was done in Microsoft excel through Descriptive statistic,’t’ test and chi-square tests. Results: In uncomplicated cases the mean platelet count was 54077± 42277 and in complicated cases the mean platelet count was 29500± 23197. This signifies platelet count were low in complicated dengue fever. This suggests that platelet count is surrogate marker of severity of dengue fever. With improving platelet count, most of patients survived, while patients with decreasing trend suggested poor outcome (p: less than 0.01) with 53 time higher chances of expiring as compared to patient with increasing trend of platelet(odd ratio:53.64). Severe thrombocytopenia was related with high mortality rate. Conclusion: From this study, we recommend that absolute platelet count and more specifically change in platelet count trend (increasing or decreasing) should be monitored closely as it can be used as a predictor of severity of dengue fever.