Typhoid and paratyphoid fever in children. Review of symptoms and therapy in 165 cases.

ALTHOUGH the prognosis in typhoid and paratyphoid fevers has improved considerably with the advent of antibiotics, recent medical literature lacks clinical reports of large series of cases. This paper describes our considerable experience with hospitalized pe-diatric patients, and may serve an instructive purpose. Our experience with infant cases is the subject of a future report. Case Material We reviewed the data from 165 consecutive children hospitalized with typhoid or para-typhoid fevers over a 14-year period at the Nemazee Hospital, Shiraz, Iran. All diagnoses were based on positive blood cultures, or on serologic titers against the somatic typhoid 0 antigen rising to over 1:160, or both. Treated ambulatory patients were excluded from the analysis because of the incompleteness of clinical records.