Case Definitions for Influenza: Need for standardization in the Indian settings

摘要

Influenza is a major cause of ill health and fatality in India. The present study evaluates the performance of case definitions for Influenza enabling these to be used as a screening tool. The study includes patients with any acute medical illness of recent onset, including acute exacerbations of underlying chronic conditions. The authors have employed appropriate methodology and a good study design. The validity of the study is questionable since the authors have included only hospitalised patients. Though the authors have calculated relative risk to determine the symptoms which predict Influenza closely, but multivariate logistic regression would have been a better approach due to multiplicity of comparisons. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves could have been plotted for all the case definitions and sign/ symptom combinations to determine their diagnostic accuracy.