Engraftment, blood product support, infections, neutropenic fever, length of hospitalization and 5-year survival were analyzed as secondary outcomes.
In the present study, we further showed that the Dll4 expression levels in the peripheral blood correlated positively with total WBC counts and total protein contents in CSF, but there were no correlations of the Dll4 expression levels with the duration of fever, length of hospital stay, the biochemical markers CRP, Glu, Alt, Ast, CK and CK-MB, and the PRISM III score.
However, the expression levels of Dll4 in the peripheral blood of HFMD subjects did not correlate significantly with the duration of fever, length of hospital stay, the biochemical markers CRP, Glu, Alt, Ast, CK and CK-MB, and the PRISM III score (data not shown).
Demographic data, including age and gender, were recorded prospectively, as well as clinical data including fever duration, length of stay in hospital, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, antibiotic treatment before hospital admission, history of chronic disease, symptoms and findings, treatment, final diagnoses and deaths.
Groups with invasive CA-MRSA and groups with invasive CA-MSSA did not differ significantly regarding sex, initial leukocyte count, duration of fever, or length of hospital stay.
Even though the use of G-CSFs has been shown to shorten the duration of neutropenia, fever, and length of hospital stay, no survival benefit has been demonstrated.
[Zhang X-y, Wang Q, Zhang S, Tan W, Wang Z, Li J (2015) The use of a modified, oscillating positive expiratory pressure device reduced fever and length of hospital stay in patients after thoracic and upper abdominal surgery: a randomised trial. Journal of Physiotherapy 61: 16120].
However, symptoms comprising sepsis and obstructed labor, high fever and length of labor pains, are more generalized and may not be readily recognized by families as necessitating medical care [ 4, 41, 50- 53].
Special attention was paid to fever (including length of febrile period and highest temperature) and rash pattern (including temporal relation to fever, distribution, and morphology) as fever and rash were the two most common complaints in our cases and usually aroused considerable parental worry.
This finding is similar to a previous study that found a fever duration of <4 days for patients with influenza [ 25], while the average length of fever in dengue patients was approximately 5 days [ 39], coinciding with the disappearance of viremia.
ICU length of stay may significantly differ among patients, and this should possibly be taken into consideration when comparing fever duration among survivors and non-survivors.
