Dengue knowledge and its management practices among physicians of major cities of Pakistan

Objectives: to assess knowledge and practices related to dengue management among physicians. methods: the cross-sectional study was conducted at hospitals in islamabad, lahore, faisalabad, peshawar, quetta and karachi between june and december 2012physicians from public and private sectors filled a self-administered questionnaire about dengue knowledge and its management practices. a maximum score of 100 was assigned to the knowledge portion. data was analysed using spss 15. results: a total of 400 subjects participated in the study; 200(50%) each from public and private hospitals. of them, 223(56%) were males; 268(67%) were in the 21-30 years age bracket. the highest score was recorded in quetta 67 followed by 65 in karachi, 62 in lahore, faisalabad, peshawar and 59 in islamabad. of the total, 200 (50%) were not aware that leucopenia is a criterion for diagnosing probable dengue. similarly 140 (35%) did not know the criteria for diagnosing dengue haemorrhagic fever and warning signs of severe dengue. total of 204 (51%) were not aware of the criteria for discharging of the admitted cases. there was no significant difference between dengue knowledge of the physicians belonging to public and private sectors (p>0.05). conclusions: quite a large number of physicians lacked knowledge of probable diagnosis of dengue and appropriate time to discharge the patients.