Investigation of the patients presenting to Dokuz Eylul Unıversity Hospital with a tick bite and investigation of ticks from pilot regions

Determination of the properties of ticks which are the vectors of many infectious diseases and the patients with tick bite are important for the prevention of these diseases. For that reason, the purpose of this study is to determine the important properties of the cases presented with tick bite to Dokuz Eylül University Hospital and the removed ticks from the cases.Two hundred seventy three of 294 patiens who presented with tick bite, to Dokuz Eylül University Hospital, İzmir, from July 2008 to June 2009 were included in the study. Demographic parametres, symptoms related to tick borne diseases of the patients and species and the other characteristics of ticks removed from humans, also tick population in the related habitat area were investigated.Removed ticks were classified in five genera. The overwhelmingly dominant genera was Hyalomma and it comprised 52.4% of the collection. The majority of these ticks were nymphs. The majority (11.4%) of removed adult ticks were R. sanguineus. There was no significant difference in removing ticks without damage between the health personnels and person himself or their relatives (p=0.133).