Study Of Etiological Incidence Of Pyrexia Of Unknown Origin. (P.U.O) In OPD Mayo Hospital, Lahore.

Abstract

P.U.O has been a dilemma for a long time for doctors as well as patients, as fever is no doubt a marker of disease and not a disease itself and when this marker is not linked with other markers i.e. clinical symptoms and investigation reports, the alone marker is re-named as P.U.O.P.U.O has been defined as fever which persists for more than 2 weeks and remains undiagnosed despite work-up with other clinical findings and relevant investigations. P.U.O is annoying to the patient as well as the doctor as it may result in diseases with complications beyond treatment strategy or the disease itself in its worst form when it is ultimately diagnosed. The objective of this study is to highlight P.U.O cases in our O.P.D. department, which reflects the number of patients who could not be either assessed fully or diagnose and we further re-evaluated these cases with an effort to diagnose and treat those patients, 32 patients in O.P.D, Mayo Hospital were included in this study which is still going on till December 1998. Every patient was assessed by a performa which was filled in and was investigated and followed up accordingly. We were successful in diagnosing 78% of the cases and 22% were still left undiagnosed.