Early identification of leptospirosis as an ignored cause of multiple organ dysfunction syndrome.

Leptospirosis is the most common zoonosis in the world but remains underreported, owing to protean manifestations and ignorance about the disease among health care providers in Taiwan. From September 2000 to March 2006, surveillance of 455 patients with multiple organ dysfunction syndrome with unclear cause or clinical suspicion of leptospirosis was performed. Diagnosis was further confirmed by microscopic agglutination test or isolation of Leptospira.

The quality of hemodialysis in patients with mental retardation.

Background: Mentally retarded renal failure patients receiving hemodialysis (HD) comprise a small group of HD patients. There was no previous study describing how to manage these patients during HD and if they could achieve adequate dialysis quality.

Methods: We reported seven cases of mentally retarded patients with renal failure among 1224 patients receiving hemodialysis.