Abstract
To characterize the incidence and duration of hospitalization due to diarrhea and to assess the proportion of hospitalizations that are attributed to rotavirus-associated diarrhea. Retrospective study of hospitalization data. Hospitals located in Quebec. Children from one to 59 months of age who were discharged from hospital from April 1, 1985 to March 31, 1998. There were 63,827 hospitalizations for diarrhea over the study period, for an average of 4910 hospitalizations/year. The epidemic curve showed a periodicity with regular alternation of high and low annual peaks. The number of hospitalizations for rotavirus-associated diarrhea was estimated according to three different methods. The estimates varied between 1353 and 1849 hospitalizations due to rotavirus-associated diarrhea/year over the 13-year period, with good agreement between the results of the three methods for a one-month to five years of age incidence of 320 hospitalizations for rotavirus-associated diarrhea/100,000 children. The average duration of hospital stay decreased from 5.2 days in 1985 to 3.3 days in 1998. The present article shows the importance of diarrhea hospitalizations among children and the alternating peak-year periodicity.
Highlights
Study population The study population consisted of all children from one to 59 months of age who were hospitalized for diarrhea in Quebec from April 1, 1985 to March 31, 1998
The epidemic curve for diarrhea hospitalizations (Figure 1) showed a periodicity in which high annual peaks were noted in evennumbered years, followed by low peaks in odd-numbered
Direct data are lacking to determine the proportion of diarrheal episodes due to rotavirus, and other methods must be used to estimate the burden of hospitalizations that may be prevented by a new vaccine
Summary
To characterize the incidence and duration of hospitalization due to diarrhea and to assess the proportion of hospitalizations that are attributed to rotavirus-associated diarrhea. The number of hospitalizations for rotavirus-associated diarrhea was estimated according to three different methods. CONCLUSIONS: The present article shows the importance of diarrhea hospitalizations among children and the alternating peak-year periodicity. CONCLUSIONS : L’enquête montre l’importance des hospitalisations pour diarrhée chez les enfants et une périodicité avec alternance de pics annuels. The purpose of the present study was to estimate the number of hospitalizations that may be associated with rotavirus. These data are not directly available because routine microbiological testing is not performed for all children who are hospitalized for diarrhea. Three different methods were used to estimate the proportion of all hospitalizations with a diagnosis of diarrhea that could be attributable to rotavirus
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