Assessment of Kala-azar Disease by Using Diagnostic Ultrasound

Abstract

Visceral leishmaniasis which is known as Kala azar, or black fever, is a chronic infectious disease caused by a protozoan parasite of the genus leishmaniasis, it is transmitted by an insect bite such as fly bite and affects all organs in the body. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of Kala azar on the visceral organs. The study was conducted on Gadaref state; the sample consisted of 144 of Kala azar patients (112 males and 32 females) in the period from October 2010 to February 2011. The data was collected by using ultrasound scanning technique where the patients were scanned in order to evaluate the condition of the liver, gall bladder, spleen and portal vein using B-mode. The data were collected on the following variables: texture, echogenecity and size for all the respective organs. The results of this study showed that; there is a significant difference between the liver, spleen, gall bladder and portal vein from the normal sizes using t-test at p = 0.05 except for gall bladder thickness where the results were inconclusive. The results also revealed that the predominant texture was the homogeneous one 95.1% while echogenecity showed that 92.4% of the cases had hyper echoic appearance