Tetanus at Udonthani Hospital

Objective: To study the clinical profile of tetanus patients especially the age, sex, route of infection, types of tetanus, incubation period and onset, underlying disease, duration of admission, antibiotics and complication. Materials and methods: A retrospective study was carried out in 85 tetanus patients who were admitted to medical department of Udonthani Hospital, From 1 July 1996 – 30 June 2006. Result: The patients with tetanus, 52.90 percent were male and 47.10 were female. The average age were 48.88, the most at risk were 41-50 years old. Most patients with this case, 82.35 percent were generalized and 17.65 were localized. The incubation period was about 7 days and became generalized in one day. The tetanus patients with diabetics and chronic renal failure trended to be severe that could cause death 83.30 – 100 percent relatively. The duration of admission was about 29-35 days. Penicillin was the main antibiotic to cure these cases, about 59.29 percent of these cases had pneumonia as the chief complication and about 24.70 percent causing death. Conclusion: The result of this study showed that most patients were received clostridium tetani from the contaminated wounds at feet. Generalized tetanus was found 82.35% of patients The mortalily rate was 24.70%. The results revealed that factors which significant correlated to the mortalily rate were the age of patients (> 50 years), the duration between the contaminated time and the onset of symptoms (≤ 7 days), the underlying diseases (D.M., chronic renal failure). The prevention by active immunization was the most proper management for tetanus.