Miroslav Gbúr, Miriam Kozárová, Ján Lazúr
Hantaviruses cause in humans two distinct diseases: Haemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) and Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS), which are partially overlapping clinical syndromes. HFRS and its milder variant nephropathia epidemica occur in most European countries including Slovakia. The course of the disease has typically 5 phases. It starts abruptly with fevers and chills accompanying by flu-like and gastrointestinal symptoms. Haemorrhagic signs are not always pronounced, thrombocytopenia is typical and sudden transient myopic shift pathognomic. After temporary blood pressure drop even with the possibility of shock development, acute oliguric renal failure appears with subsequent polyuria and gradual recovery. In general the therapy is conservative, symptomatic sometimes with the necessity of using extracorporal elimination methods. The differential diagnosis of febrile disease with acute renal failure and thrombocytopenia is broad and since only 28 - 50 % of patients with serologically confirmed hantaviral infection had been diagnosed properly at admission, HFRS should be an integral part of it.