Table 2.
Characteristics of Hospitalized Malaria Patients Who Did or Did Not Meet World Health Organization (2015) Broad Severe Malaria Criteria
| Plasmodium vivax | Plasmodium falciparum | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clinical Characteristic | Patients, No. (%)a | P Value | Patients, No. (%)a | P Value | ||
| WHO Criteria Not Met (n = 210) |
WHO Criteria Met (n = 68) |
WHO Criteria Not Met (n = 3362) |
WHO Criteria Met (n = 1482) |
|||
| Infectious diagnosis present | 50 (24) | 20 (29) | .35 | 137 (4) | 110 (7) | <.001 |
| Chronic disease present | 4 (2) | 3 (4) | .25 | 8 (0.2) | 10 (0.7) | .02 |
| Post-partum womenb | 10/127 (8) | 7/46 (15) | .16 | 5/1215 (0.4) | 3/599 (0.5) | .72 |
| Prostration | 25 (12) | 16 (24) | .02 | 355 (11) | 469 (32) | <.001 |
| Convulsionsc | 0 (0) | 4 (6) | .003 | 0 (0) | 33 (2) | <.001 |
| Age, y | ||||||
| <1 | 48 (23) | 8 (12) | .10d | 55 (2) | 35 (2) | <.001d |
| 1–5 | 48 (23) | 16 (24) | 709 (21) | 447 (30) | ||
| 6–10 | 14 (7) | 6 (9) | 616 (18) | 272 (18) | ||
| 11–15 | 8 (4) | 2 (3) | 473 (14) | 140 (9) | ||
| >15 | 92 (44) | 35 (53) | 1509 (45) | 588 (40) | ||
| Parasitemia, geometric mean (95% CI), parasites/µL | 2576 (32–46 472) | 1576 (16–31 149) | .12 | 147 606 (3768–425 030) | 196 986 (2304–976 162) | <.001 |
| Duration of hospital stay, median (IQR; range) d | 3 (2–4; 1–32) | 2 (2–4; 1–26) | .90 | 4 (3–6; 1–34) | 5 (4–6; 1–31) | <.001 |
| Intravenous artesunate | 31 (15) | 13 (19) | .39 | 655 (19) | 677 (46) | <.001 |
| Blood transfusion | 26 (12) | 19 (28) | .002 | 323 (10) | 317 (21) | <.001 |
Abbreviations: CI, confidence interval; IQR, interquartile range; WHO, World Health Organization.
Data represent no. (%) of patients unless otherwise indicated.
The denominators for post-partum women represent the number of female patients aged >15 years.
The WHO 2015 malaria guidelines [25] criterion for convulsions is >2 convulsions in 24 hours. It does not specify that convulsions must be accompanied by a low Glasgow Coma Scale score.
Univariable ordered logistic regression analysis was used to determine the relationship between age groups and whether or not WHO criteria were met.