Management of Severe Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease in Xiangyang, China from 2008-2013.

Therapeutic strategies for severe hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) are currently either inconsequent or deficient in evidence. We retrospectively surveyed HFMD outbreaks in Xiangyang from June 2008 to December 2013. FHMD is staged form I to V according to clinical severity and the case with central nervous system involvement is defined as a severe one. Most severe cases were investigated to analyse risk factors for fatality and to compare the efficiency and outcome of some therapies by binary logistic regression. The overall HFMD cases included 637 (1.26%) severe cases, 38 fatal cases (0.75‰). Analysis indicates that age (<3 y), enterovirus 71 (+), autonomic nervous system dysregulation, pulmonary edema/hemorrhage, CRP (>40 mg/L) and cardiac troponin I (>0.04 ng/mL) are risk factors for fatality (all P < 0.05). Intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) and mechanical ventilation applied in early stage IV significantly improved HFMD progression (both P < 0.05) with odds ratios of 0.24 (95% CI: 0.10-0.57) and 0.01 (95% CI: 0.00-0.10), respectively. Methylprednisolone and milrinone administered in any stage, and all therapies applied in stage III made no significant difference on mortality (all P > 0.05). Precise recognition of the severe HFMD cases in early stage IV and timely IVIG and mechanical ventilation application may decrease mortality. Mechanical ventilation training programs and dispatching specialists to county-level or district hospitals when there is no chance for severe HFMD cases to be transferred to superior hospitals are two key successful administrative initiatives.