Abstract Rationale Community acquired pneumonia (CAP) represents the most common reason for emergency department visit in pediatrics, as well as the main cause of death in children worldwide, causing 15% of all pediatric deaths, according to the World Health Organization. In our center, Hospital Militar Escuela Alejandro Dávila Bolaños, CAP represents the most common admission diagnosis in the pediatric department. The length of hospital stay is directly proportional to the severity of disease and represents an indirect measure to analyze the quality of care. No prior studies reporting factors with association to prolonged hospital stay in our center have been conducted. Therefore, we conducted this study to determine which factors can predict a prolonged hospital in this population. Methods We performed case-control analysis of patients admitted to the department of pediatrics on our center, with an admission diagnosis of CAP during the period between March 2022 and March 2023. Prolonged hospital stay was defined as a length of stay equal to or greater than 5 days. Based on this, a case was defined as a patient admitted for CAP with a prolonged hospital stay, while a control was defined as a patient admitted for this reason with a hospital stay of less than 5 days. Data analysis was performed with the software SPSS version 24. We determined odds ratio with 95% confidence interval (CI) and used Pearson’s Chi Square test to determine association of categorical variables, defining as significant association if the value of p was less than 0.05. Results The total population included on the study was 204 patients, representing 68 cases and 138 controls. Among patients include, 50% had an age between 1 to 4 years, and 90% had a nutritional status classified as eutrophic. On bivariate analysis, factors with significant association to prolonged hospital stay were: age younger than 1 (p: 0.04), non-exclusive breastfeeding (p: 0.001), incomplete vaccination scheme (p: 0.0000), prior comorbidities (p: 0.001), presence of wheezing of admission (p: 0.01), hypoxemia (p: 0.000), signs of dehydration (p: 0.000), altered mental status/acute encephalopathy on admission (p: 0.0000). Conclusions We identified eight factors with significant association to prolonged hospital stay among pediatric patients admitted with CAP. Further research is needed on how to implement the data provided by this study, including possible early interventions to reduce the need for prolonged hospital stay. This abstract is funded by: None
Otero et al. (Fri,) studied this question.
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