Introduction: Dengue has exhibited an epidemic behaviour in Apartad6 since 1998.
Objective: To describe the clinical behavior of dengue in patients hospitalized with this diagnosis in the Antonio Roldán Betancur Hospital of Apartadó in the year 2000.
Materials and methods: Descriptive retrospective study with variables obtained from clinical records of patients hospitalized with dengue in the Antonio Roldán Betancur Hospital of Apartadó.
Results: 45 patients with the diagnosis of dengue were hospitalized during the study period, all of them with IgM antibodies against dengue virus. Three (6.7%) patients were classified as classic dengue fever, 22 (48.9%) as dengue fever with haemorrhagic manifestations, and 20 patients (44.4%) were classified as dengue haemorrhagic fever. Patient age ranged from 4 months to 68 years, with a mean of 22.1 years. The great majority of patients (82.8%) came from urban areas. The most frequent clinical manifestations were fever (100%), myalgia (71.1%), joint pain (71.1%), headache (70%) and abdominal pain (67.5%). The most frequent haemorrhagic manifestations were petechiae (60%), hematuria (31.7%), ecchymoses on venipuncture sites (24.4%), gastric bleeding (22.2%) and abnormal vaginal bleeding (15.5%). Platelet count ranged from 11.000 to 186.000/mm3, with a mean of 48.688. Hematocrit ranged from 26% to 59% with a mean of 41.5%. Four of the 45 patients died. 40% of patients had other co-morbidities; coinfection with malaria was the most frequent amongst them (8 patients, 17.7%).
Conclusion: Two remarkable findings of our descriptive retrospective study were the high mortality of dengue in our population (8.8%) 4/45, specially in children under 1 year of age (3/4) and the high incidence of simultaneous infection with malaria parasites.