It is recommended that if an
etiologic diagnosis is not readily apparent after a detailed history, examination and initial investigations, magnetic resonance imaging should be the standard clinical practice for a child with global developmental delay.
In the above 50 years age group, most common
etiologic factors are coronary artery disease 30%, followed by RHD (24%), hypertension (16.4%), lone atrial fibrillation (5.9%) and non-rheumatic valvular heart disease (13.4%).
The only study done in Pakistan on frequency of atypical pneumonia used a clinical approach for diagnosis in hospitalised children which is not reliable in terms of differentiating between
etiologic causes of pneumonia.6
It was significantly associated with the detection of
etiologic diagnosis (p=0.034).
In addition, FDA specifies that the response to the
etiologic agent in the animal species exposed should be similar to the illness or injury experienced in humans.
Agrawal and his colleagues reported that, based on the
etiologic findings and antibiotic sensitivities, only 43% of the first-choice antibiotics were appropriate in the vaccine era.
In the hospital, the
etiologic organism is identified in only 15%-20% of pneumonia cases, and the most of those results come from blood culture, not sputum.
When recall of exposure differs for cases and controls, "recall bias", a form of information bias, presents a major threat for
etiologic case-control studies (13, 14).
Notification involving
etiologic agents must be given to the director, Center for Disease Control, U.S.
Etiologic: relating to the cause or origin of a disease or abnormality.
* When an outbreak occurs, epidemiologic data may suggest hypotheses of
etiologic agent, place of eating, a meal, or a food.
Streptococcus mutans species have been shown to be the commonest
etiologic agents of caries.