Abstract

Thrombocytopenia in acute febrile illness is an alarming finding and most commonly seen in malaria and dengue patients. In the present study we evaluated and followed up 200 patient of acute febrile illness with thrombocytopenia for ten days, for changes in both clinical, biochemical and haematological parameters. Majority of cases in present study were of dengue(45%) followed by malaria (22%), septicaemia(15%) enteric fever(4%) etc. The patients of dengue presented earlier (4.11± 1.42) around 4th day as compared to other groups. The skin rash, bleeding tendency, tourniquet test positivity and respiratory abnormalities were seen in dengue patients(p<0.05), while abdominal pain, diarrhoea, anaemia, jaundice, hepatomegaly and splenomegaly were more frequent in malaria patients(p><0.05). In dengue patients decrease in WBC count was noticed around 6th day of fever which gradually recovered, while in malaria there was increase in WBC count around 2nd day of fever which gradually recovered by 10th day . Fall in haemoglobin was also noticed in malaria cases. There was continuous fall in platelet count till 6th day of illness in dengue patient while in malaria platelet fall was noticed early i.e. from 2nd day of fever which gradually recovered. KFT was more commonly affected in dengue while LTF in malaria. The duration of stay in hospital was higher in malaria as compared to dengue. We suggest that our findings may be used in remote area where facilities for specific test may not be available or during epidemics.>