Background: The burden of dengue is high in the Philippines but the prevalence of confirmed cases is unknown, and the disease is subject to underreporting because surveillance of suspected cases is passive. We conducted a prospective epidemiological study to estimate the proportion of laboratory-confirmed dengue among clinically suspected hospitalized cases in the pediatric wards of 3 regional hospitals in the Philippines and to describe the clinical and laboratory features, age distributions, case fatality rates and serotype distributions of these hospitalized cases.
Methods: Patients ≤18 years and hospitalized for suspected dengue were included if they had an axillary temperature ≥38°C for 2-7 days and 2 or more dengue-associated symptoms.