Complications of brucellosis in adults: an experience from a state hospital in southeastern anatolia region of Turkey

ABSTRACT

To evaluate the complications and systems involvement of acute Brucella infection in adults Retrospective study Midyat State Hospital, Mardin, Turkey Seventy-eight patients with acute brucellosis. Brucellosis treatment The frequency of complications and systems involvements. This retrospective study was carried out at the Infectious Diseases and Neurology clinics between April 2007 and August 2008. The diagnosis of brucellosis was made with compatible clinical findings, positive Brucella agglutination 1/160 titers, and / or the isolation of Brucella species. Complication was defined as the presence of symptomsor physical signs of infection at a particular anatomic site in a patient with active brucellosis. This study focuses on the frequency of complications in cases with brucellosis. Out of 78 patients, 46 [59%] were female and 32 [41%] were male. The mean age of patients was 36.4 +/- 14.2 years. Skeletal complications were the most frequent, found in 26 [33.8%] cases, followed by hematological [n=25, 32.1%], cutaneous [n=3, 3.9%], nervous [n=2, 2.6%], genitourinary [n=2, 2.6%], respiratory [n=1, 1.3%] and gastrointestinal system [n=1, 1.3%]. Brucellosis, whether in an endemic region or not, remains a diagnostic puzzle due to occasional misleading unusual presentations and non-specificsymptoms.Itisa systemic infection in which any organ or system of the body can be involved. Our data showed that brucellosis is a preventable disease. Knowledge and early diagnoses of the complications are especially important