[Complications of typhoid fever and its causes in an epidemic focus]

Autopsy records, case histories, and archival organ and tissue samples were studied in 109 Soviet military men during the Afghanistan war, who had died of typhoid fever in 1980-1986. Morphological and statistical studies demonstrated that the current pattern and frequency of complications and immediate causes of death with the epidemic incidence in the endemic focus largely corresponded to those in the preantibiotic period. The specific features were the higher rate and early development of enteric complications, infectious myocarditis, and infectious-toxic shock, the higher, as compared with the past years, proportion of deaths from circulatory diseases and a reduction of cases of total intoxication. Acute cardiovascular insufficiency associated with infectious myocarditis and infectious-toxic shock was one of the main causes of death in the first 2 weeks of typhoid fever. Most patients died of perforative peritonitis and pneumonia in the later period.