[Clinical and epidemiological review of SARS].

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was caused by a previously unrecognized new type coronavirus. The disease probably first emerged in Guangdong China around November 2002, and it spread from there first to countries in Southeast Asia, and finally throughout the world. During the outbreak, more than 8,000 cases and about 800 deaths had been reported. The first sign of illness in most cases of SARS is fever, headache, malaise, or myalgia, and then majority of patients present severe atypical pneumonia. It appeared that disease spread most often in hospitals in health care workers, and patients and among family members. Given the severity of SARS, clinicians throughout the world empirically treated most patients with corticosteroids and ribavirin.