Trend of intestinal infectious diseases recorded at a tertiary care hospital in India: An ICD-10 analysis

The World Health Organization identifies the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in developing countries as infectious and communicable diseases. Health records coded uniformly using ICD-10 can form an accurate database and conclusions drawn from this are extremely important for understanding the public health situation. The aim of this study is to analyse the trend of intestinal infectious diseases recorded at a tertiary care hospital in India. A retrospective disease index study was conducted on data comprising 5317 cases from 2012 to 2016 for intestinal infectious diseases, analysed with ICD-10. Of these, 5.5% were from the age group 0-5 years; 57.66% were male; and 85% deaths in this cohort (62/73) were due to diarrhoea and gastroenteritis of presumed infectious origin. The findings of this study highlight an urgent need for health education among the population regarding infectious intestinal diseases and to redesign health promotion and preventive strategies for addressing these problems.