The Incidence of Venous Thromboembolism in Dengue Viral Infections: A Systematic Review

Abstract

BACKGROUND Dengue infection has become a major public health problem with significant socioeconomic burden to the increasing geographical extension, number of cases, and severity of the disease. One of the neglected complications in dengue is venous thromboembolism (VTE) which could also be as fatal is often overlooked in the overall management of dengue. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to provide a perspective on the incidence of thromboembolism in patients with dengue infection. METHODS The search strategy was conducted through PubMed and LinkSpringer. About 182 articles were retrieved using ‘vein thrombosis’ and ‘dengue’ keywords. Further, screening was carried out and resulted in 15 articles. In the end, five articles were included. To be eligible, the articles should be published from 2011-2121 and published in English. RESULTS This review found that VTE can occur in dengue patients of all ages, genders, and severities. VTE is more common in dengue shock syndrome patient rather than dengue haemorrhagic fever or least likely in dengue fever. Administering Anticoagulants is still the preferred option in managing VTE in dengue patients with caution of the thrombocyte count of patients. CONCLUSIONS The likeliness of VTE occurrence is linear with the severity of the dengue infection and the patient’s length of stay in hospitals. Preventive measures could be taken to prevent VTE in high-risk dengue patients, thus it is important to do risk scoring in high-risk patients. Thrombocytopenia must be taken into account when realizing said preventive measure, i.e., administering anticoagulant as prophylaxis.