Profile of fatal visceral leishmaniasis at an Indian tertiary care center.

Visceral leishmaniasis is a highly morbid and incapacitating infection, which usually presents with prolonged fever, weight loss and hepato-splenomegaly. Despite the availability of effective treatment, the disease can have a high mortality even at referral centers. A case series of fatal visceral leishmaniasis, encountered during a prospective, two year period is presented. All the patients died due to multisystem organ failure. However, delayed diagnosis due to atypical manifestations was an important factor contributing to the fatal outcome of the patients. Instead of relying solely on the classical clinical features of visceral leishmaniasis, simple laboratory findings like pancytopenia, altered albumin/globulin ratio and appositive aldehyde and rK 39 dipstick tests can help in making an early diagnosis even in atypical cases, thereby reducing the mortality of visceral leishmaniasis.

Comparison of arterial and venous pH, bicarbonate, PCO2 and PO2 in initial emergency department assessment.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the agreement between arterial and venous samples in a pathologically diverse patient population presenting at an emergency department (ED) with a view to obviating the need for arterial blood gas (ABG) analysis in initial ED evaluation. METHODS: Prospective study of 95 patients (69 males, 26 females, mean (SD) age 52 (1.6) years) with diverse medical conditions, presenting at a tertiary health centre ED and deemed by the treating physician to require an ABG analysis. Arterial and venous samples for gas analysis were taken as close in time to each other as possible. The data thus obtained were analysed for agreement between pH, Pco(2), Po(2) and bicarbonate using the Bland-Altman method. RESULTS: The arterial and venous values of pH, bicarbonate and Pco(2) show acceptably narrow 95% limits of agreement using the Bland-Altman method (0.13 to -0.1, 4.3 to -5.8 and 6.8 to -7.6, respectively). Agreement in Po(2) measurements was poor (95% limits of agreement 145.3 to -32.9). CONCLUSION: Venous blood gas analysis for pH, bicarbonate and Pco(2) may be a reliable substitute for ABG analysis in the initial evaluation of an adult patient population presenting to the ED.

Visceral leishmaniasis: acute liver failure in an immunocompetent Asian-Indian adult.

Fulminant liver failure due to visceral leishmaniais is very rare, and has been described only in children. We report an immunocompetent adult man who developed acute liver failure due to leishmaniais and dramatically recovered with amphotericin-B therapy.