Clinical and Epidemiologic Findings of Pertussis Suspected Patients Referred to Zanjan Health Centers in 2011-2012

  Despite frequent vaccination, Pertussis is still relatively common in the world. The prevalence of this disease has been reported differently in different parts of the world. The aim of this study was to investigate clinical and pediatric findings and compare them with the results of nasopharyngeal culture in suspected Pertussis patients in Zanjan province. In this cross-sectional study, records of all patients referred to Zanjan health center during 2011-2015 with suspected Pertussis were evaluated. Data were collected from questionnaires and analyzed by SPSS v16 software using frequency distribution, chi-square and chi-square test.
Findings: Of the 243 patients examined, 17 (7%) patients were positive for nasopharyngeal culture. Eight of them were male and 9 were females. The highest number of cases was in winter (9 cases). We found cough in all cases and post coughing vomiting in 15 cases . Of the 17 positive cultured patients, 11 patients were below 6 months (before completing three doses of vaccine).
Discussion & In this study, the positive nasopharyngeal culture was similar to most of the national’s studies but was less than that of other countries.