Etiology, clinical signs, paraclinical findings and prognosis of bloody diarrhea in Children Admitted to CHILDREN REFERRAL Hospital: A retrospective five-year experience

Diarrhea is a serious disease and a major cause of mortality in children under 5
years of age. Diarrhea is also an important factor in children's physical growth retardation, malnutrition
and susceptibility to other diseases. Hence, the purposes of this study were to investigate common
factors to identify causes of diarrhea and its result can be a step on the path to better treatment and
prevention of infectious diseases. Study of the etiology of bloody diarrhea in children admitted to Tabriz
Children's Hospital during 2009 to 2015
Materials & Methods: Medical records of 157 patients with bloody diarrhea were randomly selected
and reviewed. Age, sex, length of hospitalization, duration of diarrhea, other clinical symptoms,
response to treatment and outcome were recorded from documents. All data were collected and analyzed
using SPSS® version 16 software.
Results: Of all patients, 89.8% and 10.2% were admitted due to infectious and non-infectious etiologies
of bloody diarrhea, respectively. Among the infectious and non-infectious agents, shigellosis and
inflammatory bowel syndrome were the most common causes of childhood diarrhea in children.
Approximately 93% of hospitalized patients with complete recovery and 5.7% were discharged with
relative improvement. In addition, the mortality rate in this study was 0.63%.
Conclusion: The results of this study showed that despite the higher prevalence of infectious dysentery
that can be prevented by a high-level hygiene, the mortality rate of non-infectious dysenteries are higher.
Therefore, in addition to preventing such diarrhea, suspected cases should be treated promptly and fully