Erik Su, MD
Assistant Professor
Baylor College of Medicine at Texas Children's Hospital
Houston, Texas
Disclosure information not submitted.
Paul Dahm, MD, MS
Assistant Professor
University of Texas Health Science Center At Houston, United States
Disclosure information not submitted.
Title: Patterns Of Pediatric Critical Care Transport and Injury During the Coronavirus-19 Pandemic
Introduction: The coronavirus-19 pandemic has wrought significant challenges and changes to healthcare delivery nationally. This study sought to examine trends in pediatric transport during the pandemic as minors experienced unprecedented challenges during restrictions initiated during this time; direct effect of coronavirus disease and MIS-C, social distancing effects on both school and extracurricular exposures, and alterations in home life due to other social stressors. This retrospective analysis sought to characterize these changes at a tertiary pediatric referral center and the busiest pediatric trauma center in the United States. This analysis was performed examining the period of 3/2020-21 and comparing it to two previous years’ data for significant differences in admission diagnosis patterns.
Methods: A 4-year database of pediatric critical care transport records of patients over the age of 10 was compared between the 3/2018-20 and 3/2020-6/2021 with the latter representing the time frame in which coronavirus-19 restrictions were most present. Patients presenting with injuries resulting in critical care transport were grouped and compared to other transports using chi-square test. Injuries were classified as patients presenting with trauma or burns, toxic ingestion, and drowning.
Results: Four hundred ninety-five patients over the age of 10y were transported by the pediatric critical care transport team during the period observed, of these 230 were transported in the period between 3/2020-6/2021, compared to 265 total in previous years. 66 (25%) of these patients were transported for injuries compared to 65 (28%) for the 2 years prior, a nonsignificant difference (p = 0.41). Infectious and respiratory distress diagnoses were significantly higher in the earlier epoch with 68 (26%) patients compared to 37 (16%) in the later epoch (p = 0.02).
Conclusion: The data reveal that total transfers and transfers for injuries in children over the age of 10y did not change during the coronavirus-19 pandemic despite concerns that social restrictions would lead to more injury issues from harm for children. A significant and proportionally greater decrease in transfers for infection and respiratory distress was noted and follow-up analyses of later epochs are being conducted.