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. 2018 Apr 10;18(1):264.
doi: 10.1186/s12913-018-3041-x.

Pediatric admissions that include intensive care: a population-based study

Ibinabo Ibiebele  1   2 , Charles S Algert  3   4 , Jennifer R Bowen  3   5 , Christine L Roberts  3   4
Affiliations

Pediatric admissions that include intensive care: a population-based study

Ibinabo Ibiebele et al. BMC Health Serv Res. .

Abstract

Background: Pediatric admissions to intensive care outside children's hospitals are generally excluded from registry-based studies. This study compares pediatric admission to specialist pediatric intensive care units (PICU) with pediatric admissions to intensive care units (ICU) in general hospitals in an Australian population.

Methods: We undertook a population-based record linkage cohort study utilizing longitudinally-linked hospital and death data for pediatric hospitalization from New South Wales, Australia, 2010-2013. The study population included all new pediatric, post-neonatal hospital admissions that included time in ICU (excluding neonatal ICU).

Results: Of 498,466 pediatric hospitalizations, 7525 (1.5%) included time in an intensive care unit - 93.7% to PICU and 6.3% to ICU in a general (non-PICU) hospital. Non-PICU admissions were of older children, in rural areas, with shorter stays in ICU, more likely admitted for acute conditions such as asthma, injury or diabetes, and less likely to have chronic conditions, receive continuous ventilatory support, blood transfusion, parenteral nutrition or die.

Conclusions: A substantial proportion of children are admitted to ICUs in general hospitals. A comprehensive overview of pediatric ICU admissions includes these admissions and the context of the total hospitalization.

Keywords: Children; Critical care; Hospitalization; Intensive care; Mortality; Pediatrics.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Ethics approval was obtained from the NSW Population and Health Services Research Ethics Committee (2002/12/430) prior to commencement of this study. A waiver of consent was granted for use of de-identified data.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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