Bidyut Prava Das1, Ratnadeep Ganguly2
BACKGROUND
Malaria continues to be a major health problem in at least 91 countries/territories including India and continues to cause significant morbidity and mortality. The haematological abnormalities that have been marked consistently with malaria are anaemia, thrombocytopenia, and atypical lymphocytosis and infrequently disseminated intravascular coagulation.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
This cross sectional study was conducted in SCB Medical College, Cuttack of Odisha. The laboratory confirmed cases of malaria from January to December 2012 were included in the study. Haematological profile of complicated cases of malaria was evaluated compared to uncomplicated cases.
RESULTS
A total of 120 complicated malaria patients and 80 uncomplicated malaria patients were investigated. The difference in mean haemoglobin level and platelet count was significantly low in complicated cases compared to uncomplicated cases. Peripheral blood smear examination indicated that 68.60% of the complicated cases were associated with microcytic hypochromic anaemia, 23.26% with normocytic-normochromic anaemia and 8.14% had dimorphic anaemia. Atypical lymphocytes were observed in around 3.33% cases, while at least 2.5% cases of complicated cases were having eosinophilia and basophilia. Around 20.83% of complicated cases had hyperparasitaemia who had a worse prognosis.
CONCLUSION
The low level of haemoglobin and platelet can be used as a predictor of severity of the infection and thus prediction of the haematological changes enables the clinician to establish an effective and early therapeutic intervention in order to prevent the occurrence of major complications.
