Characteristics of severe malaria in hospitalized children in Ho Chi Minh City from 2012 to 2019

In Vietnam, severe malaria is currently rare but is a life-threatening disease. It may be misdiagnosed with other common diseases. This descriptive study aimed to characterize severe malaria and its clinical aspects, as well as outcomes of infected pediatric patients to improve case management. The case-series study was carried out based on medical records of children aged between one month and 15 years with malaria diagnosed by blood smear or rapid diagnostic test. Chi-squared test with the p values less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant. There were 47 cases enrolled in the study. The prevalence of severe malaria was 29.8% (57.1% in children under five). The morbidity was 71.4% in male and 28.6% in female. Common clinical signs of severe malaria were fever (100%), severe anemia (21.4%), hepatomegaly (85.7%), and splenomegaly (71.4%). Common biological abnormalities in severe malaria were anemia, thrombocytopenia, increased liver enzymes, and high CRP level. The severe malaria was mainly caused by P. falciparum (100%). The age range for those infected with P. falciparum was 6.5 ± 4.5 years (min 0.3; max 14.9). The successful rate of treatment was 92.9% with artesunate. Antimalarial treatment time was 9.0 (6 - 12) days for severe malaria, which was twice as many as that for non-severe malaria (p = 0.067). The current clinical and biological findings of severe malaria are different from those in previous times, which make it easy to be overlooked. Therefore, it's important to perform malaria diagnostic tests when there're clinical suggestions of severe malaria, including fever, hepatomegaly or splenomegaly.