[The prevalence of viral hepatitis markers in patients hospitalized in infectious disease wards with a diagnosis of acute viral hepatitis].

According with Romanian public health surveillance system, the acute viral hepatitis is nominal reportable disease for what hospital admission is compulsory (Ord. MS 638/1978 and Ord. MS 386/1985); that why, for this condition controlling purpose, only the hospital admitted cases are reported. The acute viral hepatitis statistics do not reflect the morbidity in general population but in hospitalized population; these statistics are very dependent if ill people are hospitalized or not, and in the same time by the lack possibilities of laboratory diagnosis. The objective's study were: a) to describe the structure of laboratory-based diagnostics (using ELISA kits), b) to compare this one with diagnostics established for admitted ill people in infectious wards or clinics, using electroimmunodiffusion (EID) test. The most important findings reveal that from a total of 121 cases about three quarters has been identified as type B viral hepatitis, 20% as type A viral hepatitis and 8.3% were neither type A nor type B viral hepatitis (ELISA kits for hepatitis C diagnosis there was not available for us). According with our findings we think EID technique as etiologic diagnosis for acute viral hepatitis, have to be changed. We need instead a more sensitive and timeliness test; in the same time this has to be permissive from the financial point of view.