[Characterization of patients with suspected diagnosis of dengue in the outbreak of 1997]. / Caracterización de pacientes con diagnóstico presuntivo de dengue en el brote epidémico del año 1997.

We reviewed the medical histories of the 778 patients admitted to the Military Hospital of Santiago de Cuba with presumptive diagnosis of dengue which was clinically and epidemiologically confirmed in 423 on discharge and in 24 patients from the clinical epidemiological and immunological viewpoints. From the total number of patients we selected 54 having alert signs, who were classified by age, sex, clinical manifestations and development since they arrive at the Emerging Department at 8, 24 and 72 h later and at 5 days. Data were manually and automatically processed with an ACER-500 computer. The disease was predominant in males under 50 years of age and, in one third of the patients with the alert signs, the disease was immunologically verified. The more acute clinical picture was observed between 8 h and 24 h of the process but there was no death by this cause.