[Diagnosis in 1348 patients which consulted for a probable spider bite or insect sting]

Accumulate experience, from 1955 to 1995, in an outpatient university parasitology clinic in Santiago, with 1,384 patients referred from diverse public and private medical institutions because of a probable spider bite or insect stings, is presented. It is noteworthy that only 618 (44.7%) of consultations corresponded to clinical conditions originated by arthropods, whereas from the remaining 766, 612 (44.2%) were due to a bacterial, viral or parasitic etiology and 154 (11.1%) were caused by physical or chemical agents. Frequency of diagnosis was: loxoscelism 16.6%, spider bites (excluded Loxosceles laeta) 1.3%, scorpion sting 0.9%, tick stings 2.2%, insect bites 23.7%, impetigo 6.6%, folliculitis 11.3%, boil 22.7%, erysipelas 0.1%, pustula maligna 0.3%, herpes simplex 2.5, palpebral herpes zoster 0.3%, acute Chagas' disease 0.4%, angioneurotic edema 0.1%, ecchymosis 3.0, contact dermitis 7.8% and chemical dermitis 0.2%. These frequencies do not indicate the real occurrence of the diagnosed nosologies, but what happened in a specialized outpatient clinic dealing cheaply with parasitic diseases and arthropod envenomations. Description of relevant clinical features and epidemiological considerations of pathology observed, conjointly with differential diagnosis are presented.