Analysis of Clinical Manifestations of Malaria Fever among Pediatric and Adult Patients in the Out-Patient Department
Clinical Manifestations of Malaria Fever among Pediatric and Adult Patients
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54393/pbmj.v9i9.1438Keywords:
Malaria, Pediatrics, Adults, Fever, Clinical ManifestationsAbstract
A significant variation exists between malaria’s clinical presentations among adults versus pediatric populations. Objectives: To compare malaria fever’s clinical manifestations amongst adult and pediatric patients presenting to the outpatient department of Al-Tibri Medical College and Hospital, Karachi. Methods: A cross-sectional analytical study was carried out at the Pediatric and Adult OPD, Al-Tibri Medical College and Hospital, Karachi, for six months after ethical approval. A total of 369 laboratory-confirmed malaria patients were selected through non-probability consecutive sampling. Patients under 15 years of age were classified as pediatric, and patients aged 15 years and above as adults. A structured proforma was used for data collection, and data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics version 31.0. The chi-square test or Fisher's exact test was used for comparison, and crude odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals were calculated. A p-value below 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: Out of 369 patients, 162 (43.9%) were pediatric and 207 (56.1%) were adults. Males were 58%. All patients had fever, followed by chills (81.6%) and sweating (74.8%). Vomiting (58.0% vs 36.2%), diarrhea (38.9% vs 18.8%), anemia (48.1% vs 29.0%), convulsions (28.4% vs 5.8%), and altered consciousness (17.9% vs 5.8%) were more frequent in pediatric patients. Chills (88.4% vs 72.8%) and headache (76.8% vs 54.9%) were more frequent in adults. All these differences were statistically significant (p<0.001). Conclusions: Among patients with laboratory-confirmed malaria, clinical presentation differed between pediatric and adult age groups. Pediatric patients more often had gastrointestinal and neurological features, while adults more often had chills and headache.
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Copyright © 2026. The Authors. Published by CrossLinks International Publishers LLC, USA. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), Copyright of each article remains with its authors, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. For comments editor@pakistanbmj.com
