[Haemophilus influenzae infections in 2 hospitals in the city of Puebla, Mexico].

Haemophilus influenzae has been recognized as one of the most important pathogen in the pediatric population younger than 5 years old. We analized some characteristics of the infectious diseases by Haemophilus influenzae in the pediatric group from 1985 to 1990 in two hospitals of Puebla city. From 321 children studies cases included for this work, fifty of those had infectious diseases by H. influenzae. Forty six percent of the patients developed meningitis, 22% otitis media, 12% sepsis, 10% pneumonia and 10% other infectious diseases. The majority of cases occurred in males but the difference was not statistically significant (p > 0.05). Eighty percent of diseases by H. influenzae occurred in infants younger than 24 months. The serovar b was the most frequent in invasive infections and nontypable strains were frequent in otitis media. The biovars I and IV were isolated from invasive infections. During this study two children died with meningitis and 3 patients had severe neurological damage. This finding suggests that is necessary to vaccine this population to prevent the morbilethality of infectious diseases by Haemophilus influenzae.