Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene
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Trans. R. Soc. Trop. Med. Hyg. · May 1998
Clinical predictors of malaria in Gambian children with fever or a history of fever.
Diagnosis of malaria in children is difficult without laboratory support because the symptoms and signs of malaria overlap with those of other febrile illnesses such as pneumonia. Nevertheless, in many parts of Africa diagnosis of malaria must be made without laboratory investigation. Therefore, a scoring system has been developed to assist peripheral health care workers in making this diagnosis. ⋯ Symptoms and signs were incorporated into various logistic regression models to test which were best independent predictors of malaria and these regression models were used to construct simple scoring systems which predicted malaria. A nine terms model predicted clinical malaria with a sensitivity of 89% and a specificity of 61%, values comparable to those obtained by an experienced paediatrician without laboratory support. The ability of peripheral health care workers to diagnose malaria using this approach is now being investigated in a prospective study.