Prevalence Of Herpes Zoster Hospitalization In The First Affiliated Hospital Of Chongqing Medical University

Background:Herpes Zoster is a very common infection caused by reactivation of the dormant varicella-zoster virus.It occurs at all ages but most commonly seen in elderly and immunocompromised hosts.Objective:To determine the prevalence of herpes zoster hospitalization and discuss the clinical characteristics of herpes zoster hospitalized patients in our hospital.Methods:The clinical data of 477 patients who were admitted with the primary diagnosis of herpes zoster over a period of 3 years(January 2015 through December 2017)were collected from the inpatient clinical record.General information on all the patients and the clinical characteristics of herpes zoster were analyzed carefully.Results:The prevalence of herpes zoster in our study was 13.2 per 100 patients admitted to the Dermatology Inpatient.Mean age of patients was 61.92±16.13 years old.No male or female preponderance of herpes zoster was found.All year round admission of HZ was seen with a slightly higher frequency in summer.Some patients had a declined immune status.Neuralgia was the most common primary symptom experienced by the patients.Most common involved dermatome was thoracic(34.2%),followed by Ophthalmic division of trigeminal nerve(19.3%).The duration of hospitalization ranged from 1 day to 30 days.The average duration of hospitalization was 8.33 ±3.45 days.Hypertension(33.5%)was the most common comorbid condition associated with herpes zoster followed by Diabetes mellitus(16.8%),liver diseases(9%)and so on.Conclusion:Our study revealed that most of the patients admitted with herpes zoster were older people,with equal male and female patients.Summer had a slight increase in the frequency of hospitalization.Hypertension was the most common comorbidity associated with hospitalized herpes zoster patients.