Establishment and evaluation of different fever related syndromes for screening malaria patients

Abstract

Abstract Objective: Analyze the clinical symptoms of feverish population and select significant symptoms to establish fever related syndromes to screen malaria patients. Method: A“Registration form for patients with fever”was designed to gather information about symptoms of feverish population and standard blood smear was made for each patient to do the microscope test. SPSS 17.0 was used to analyze the distribution of clinical symptoms between malaria patients and non-malaria patients. Then the significant symptoms were selected to establish different syndromes by manual combined method. Sensitivity, positive predictive value (PPV), likelihood ratio, Youden index and Kappa were used for selecting the optimal syndrome. Result: 1508 forms were got and 241 of them were malaria patients. 12 symptoms had different distribution between malaria population and non-malaria population. 52 fever related syndromes were established by using the 12 symptoms. Finally, No.52 syndrome(body temperature above 39℃, periodic onset of fever and no diarrhea) were selected as the optimal syndrome, its sensitivity and positive predictive value were 74.3% and 84.4%. Conclusion: The optimal malaria related syndromes can be used as a screen tool to screen malaria patients, especially in the villages where equipment and professional staff were lack.