Original articleReasons for Hospital Admissions Among Youth and Young Adults With Cerebral Palsy
Section snippets
Methods
We sought to objectively identify the most common reasons for admissions and associated LOS, based on a secondary analysis of health care services delivery data. Canada provides an ideal context to study the reasons for admissions because universal access to physician services is provided to all citizens through a federally funded health care insurance system. All admissions to acute care hospitals across Canada (with the exception of Quebec) are captured in the CIHI database. This database
Results
CIHI data from a sample of 1064 youth and young adults with CP were analyzed. The mean age ± SD of the youth group was 15.4±1.46 years, and 43.6% were girls. The mean age ± SD of the adult group was 26.3±2.6 years, and 42.3% were women. During the 4-year period studied, 32.2% of youth and 19.3% of young adults were admitted to an acute care hospital at least once. The total number of admissions studied was 609. The annual rates of admission were 180 per 1000 for youth and 98 per 1000 for young
Discussion
This article provides an understanding of the most common reasons for hospital admission, among youth and young adults with CP, based on empirical evidence. This health services analysis also provides statistical estimates of the rates of admissions and LOS for each of these reasons based on a large sample.
The predominant clinical issues leading to admission in both youth and young adults were epilepsy and pneumonia, accounting for 25.4% of admissions among the youth and 23.0% among the young
Conclusions
It is clear that individuals with childhood CP are frequently admitted to the hospital. It behooves clinicians to be aware of the common reasons for admissions and strategize to develop preventive care. Understanding the reasons for these admissions to the hospital and the LOS is an important cornerstone for primary health care providers to facilitate maintenance of health. This is the first article to provide a comprehensive description of the reasons for hospital admissions among youth and
Acknowledgments
We thank the Transition Study Team who supported the initial project from which the present study was generated.
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Supported by an operating grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR; grant no. MOP-64460). Dr Young is the beneficiary of a salary support award from CIHR (grant no. 950-202686).
No commercial party having a direct financial interest in the results of the research supporting this article has or will confer a benefit on the authors or on any organization with which the authors are associated.
Reprints are not available from the author.