Dengue fever in Port Sudan tertiary Hospital, Sudan

Dengue fever (DF) is endemic in the Red Sea State, Sudan. The objective of this study was to describe the clinical and laboratory investigations of dengue in patients of Port Sudan teaching hospital, Sudan, from February 2013 to April 2014. About 334 patients were enrolled in this study. Their mean age was 30±15 years. Males outnumbered females by a ratio 1.9:1. Of them, 289 patients (86.5%) had classic dengue fever. 45 patients (13.5%) had dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF), classified as 31 patients (9.3%) had DHF I; 12 patients (3.6%) had DHF II and two of them developed dengue shock syndrome (DSS) and died (0.6%). The common clinical demographic findings were high grade fever (100%), headache (84.4%), joint pain (78.4%), backache (59.3%), myalgia (46.7%), retro-orbital pain (20.7%), skin rash (8.4%) and hemorrhagic manifestations (10.5%). The significant laboratory findings were thrombocytopenia in (83.5%) patients, leukopenia in (53%) of patients, prolonged prothrombin time (PT) and partial thromboplastin time (PTT) in (9.0%) and (12.6%) of patients respectively. Reduced fibrinogen (FB) was noted in (18.3%) of patients. A strong positive correlation was showed between prolonged PTT and patients that developed bleeding episodes (P < 0.000).