Objectives: Our objectives were to determine epidemiology, clinical and laboratory characteristics of patients with haemolytic-uraemic syndrome (HUS) treated in our centre, to describe renal and extra-renal complications and the treatment required and to relate our findings with the existing bibliography.
Methods: We performed a 33-year retrospective review. We included all patients diagnosed with HUS and monitored in our hospital from January 1974 to August 2007. Clinical histories and imaging studies were reviewed.
Results: A total of 58 patients were included in our study, with a mean age of 2 years 11 months and most of them were admitted to hospital in summer. Familial hypocomplementaemia was present in one case. A total of 48 patients presented with typical HUS (with diarrhoea D+ HUS). Salmonella enteritidis and Escherichia coli O157:H7 were isolated from those patients. While 7 cases presented with atypical HUS (without diarrhoea, D- HUS), most of them associated with a respiratory tract infection due to Streptococcus. In one case platelet count was normal. Kidney biopsy was performed in 18 patients and 25 cases underwent peritoneal dialysis. As regards complications, one child with D+ HUS experienced renal cortical necrosis and required kidney transplant, while in the D-HUS group, the patient with familial hypocomplementaemia had severe hypertension.
Conclusions: a) Incidence of HUS in our environment is low. b) HUS can be present even with a normal platelet count. c) We had one case of HUS in a patient with familial hypocomplementaemia who experienced severe hypertension. d) In our group of patients, the course of the disease was not influenced by the white blood cell counts, decreased diuresis or hypocomplementaemia.