Diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) is a complication of uncontrolled diabetes mellitus, with a known increase in severity and incidence during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our institution also observed a rise in pediatric DKA cases in our largely underserved patient population. We hypothesized that the impact would be more pronounced in Black patients due to prepandemic healthcare inequities. To investigate this, we confirmed the increased number of severe DKA cases in our pediatric patients during the pandemic and then stratified data to compare laboratory values between Black and White patients. We analyzed patients with a DKA diagnosis admitted to our institution's pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) prior to the pandemic (March 2016 to December 2017) and during its peak (March 2020 to December 2021). Our data demonstrated more cases of severe DKA overall during 2020-2021 and when compared to prepandemic years, a statistically significant increase in severity for Black, but not White patients.
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