title: Risk factors leading to fatal outcome in scrub typhus patients.
abstract: Scrub typhus is a potentially fatal infectious disease. However, to this date, no epidemiologic study on mortality of complicated scrub typhus has been reported. We reviewed the clinical records of 302 patients with diagnosis of scrub typhus who were admitted to our institute between January 2000 and December 2006. In total, 297 patients with scrub typhus were analyzed and the mortality rate of this study group was 6.1%. Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed absence of eschar, event of intensive care unit admission and higher APACHE II score were independent predictive variables. Identification of these risk factors leading to fatal outcome may help physicians to start early intensive management of complicated scrub typhus.
authors.affiliation: Departments of Internal Medicine, Preventive Medicine, Chonbuk National University Medical School, and Research Institute of Clinical Medicine, Jeonju, Republic of Korea. lcsmd@chonbuk.ac.kr
authors.forename: Chang-Seop
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Jeong-Hwan
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Hwang
authors.forename: Heung-Bum
authors.initials: HB
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Keun-Sang
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Kwon
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007723:Korea / Q000453:epidemiology; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D016017:Odds Ratio; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012307:Risk Factors; D012612:Scrub Typhus / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000401:mortality*