Background: Pediatric Neurocritical Care (PNCC) diseases affect thousands of children annually. We aimed to quantify the burden of PNCC through generation of national estimates of disease incidence, utilization of critical care interventions (CCI), and hospital outcomes. Methods: We performed a retrospective cohort analysis of the Kids Inpatient Database over three years to evaluate pediatric traumatic brain injury, neuro-infection or inflammatory diseases, status epilepticus, stroke, hypoxic ischemic injury after cardiac arrest, and spinal cord injury. We evaluated use of CCI, death, length of stay, hospital charges, and poor functional outcome defined as receipt of tracheostomy or gastrostomy or discharge to a medical care facility. Results: At least one CCI was recorded in 67,058 (23%) children with a primary neurologic diagnosis, and considered a PNCC admission. Over half of PNCC admissions had at least one chronic condition, and 23% were treated in children’s hospitals. Mechanical ventilation was the most common CCI, but utilization of CCIs varied significantly by diagnosis. Among PNCC admissions, 8,110 (12%) children died during hospitalization and 14,067 (21%) children had poor functional outcomes. PNCC admissions accounted for over 1.5 million hospital days and over $4 billion in hospital costs cumulatively in the study years. Most PNCC admissions, across all diagnoses, had prolonged hospitalizations >1 week with an average cost of $39.9 thousand per admission. Conclusion: This large, nationally representative study shows PNCC diseases are a significant public health burden with substantial risk to children’s health. More research is needed to improve outcomes in these vulnerable children.
Preterm birth occurs at excessively high and disparate rates in the United States. In 2016, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) launched the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program to investigate the influence of early life exposures on child health. Extant data from the ECHO cohorts provides the opportunity to examine racial and geographic variation in effects of individual- and neighborhood-level markers of socioeconomic status (SES) on gestational age at birth. The objective of this study was to examine the association between individual-level (maternal education) and neighborhood-level markers of SES and gestational age at birth, stratifying by maternal race/ethnicity, and whether any such associations are modified by US geographic region. Twenty-six ECHO cohorts representing 25,526 mother-infant pairs contributed to this disseminated meta-analysis that investigated the effect of maternal prenatal level of education (high school diploma, GED, or less; some college, associate’s degree, vocational or technical training [reference category]; bachelor’s degree, graduate school, or professional degree) and neighborhood-level markers of SES (census tract [CT] urbanicity, percentage of black population in CT, percentage of population below the federal poverty level in CT) on gestational age at birth (categorized as preterm, early term, full term [the reference category], late, and post term) according to maternal race/ethnicity and US region. Multinomial logistic regression was used to estimate odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Cohort-specific results were meta-analyzed using a random effects model. For women overall, a bachelor’s degree or above, compared with some college, was associated with a significantly decreased odds of preterm birth (aOR 0.72; 95% CI: 0.61–0.86), whereas a high school education or less was associated with an increased odds of early term birth (aOR 1.10, 95% CI: 1.00–1.21). When stratifying by maternal race/ethnicity, there were no significant associations between maternal education and gestational age at birth among women of racial/ethnic groups other than non-Hispanic white. Among non-Hispanic white women, a bachelor’s degree or above was likewise associated with a significantly decreased odds of preterm birth (aOR 0.74 (95% CI: 0.58, 0.94) as well as a decreased odds of early term birth (aOR 0.84 (95% CI: 0.74, 0.95). The association between maternal education and gestational age at birth varied according to US region, with higher levels of maternal education associated with a significantly decreased odds of preterm birth in the Midwest and South but not in the Northeast and West. Non-Hispanic white women residing in rural compared to urban CTs had an increased odds of preterm birth; the ability to detect associations between neighborhood-level measures of SES and gestational age for other race/ethnic groups was limited due to small sample sizes within select strata. Interventions that promote higher educational attainment among women of reproductive age could contribute to a reduction in preterm birth, particularly in the US South and Midwest. Further individual-level analyses engaging a diverse set of cohorts are needed to disentangle the complex interrelationships among maternal education, neighborhood-level factors, exposures across the life course, and gestational age at birth outcomes by maternal race/ethnicity and US geography.
IMPORTANCE Earlier pubertal onset may be associated with an increased risk of chronic diseases. However, the extent to which growth in the first 5 years of life-an important developmental life stage that lays the foundation for later health outcomes-is associated with pubertal onset remains understudied.OBJECTIVE To assess whether changes in weight, length or height, and body mass index (BMI, calculated as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared) during the first 5 years of life are associated with earlier pubertal onset.
IMPORTANCE Asthma is the leading chronic illness in US children, but most descriptive epidemiological data are focused on prevalence. OBJECTIVE To evaluate childhood asthma incidence rates across the nation by core demographic strata and parental history of asthma. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS For this cohort study, a distributed meta-analysis was conducted within the Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) consortium for data collected from May 1, 1980, through March 31, 2018. Birth cohort data of children from 34 gestational weeks of age or older to 18 years of age from 31 cohorts in the ECHO consortium were included. Data were analyzed from June 14, 2018, to February 18, 2020. EXPOSURES Caregiver report of physician-diagnosed asthma with age of diagnosis. MAIN OUTCOME AND MEASURESAsthma incidence survival tables generated by each cohort were combined for each year of age using the Kaplan-Meier method. Age-specific incidence rates for each stratum and asthma incidence rate ratios by parental family history (FH), sex, and race/ethnicity were calculated. RESULTSOf the 11 404 children (mean [SD] age, 10.0 [0.7] years; 5836 boys [51%]; 5909 White children [53%]) included in the primary analysis, 7326 children (64%) had no FH of asthma, 4078 (36%) had an FH of asthma, and 2494 (23%) were non-Hispanic Black children. Children with an FH had a nearly 2-fold higher incidence rate through the fourth year of life (incidence rate ratio [IRR], 1.94; 95% CI, 1.76-2.16) after which the rates converged with the non-FH group. Regardless of FH, asthma incidence rates among non-Hispanic Black children were markedly higher than those of non-Hispanic White children during the preschool years (IRR, 1.58; 95% CI, 1.31-1.86) with no FH at age 4 years and became lower than that of White children after age 9 to 10 years (IRR, 0.67; 95% CI, 0.50-0.89) with no FH. The rates for boys declined with age, whereas rates among girls were relatively steady across all ages, particularly among those without an FH of asthma.CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE Analysis of these diverse birth cohorts suggests that asthma FH, as well as race/ethnicity and sex, were all associated with childhood asthma incidence rates. Black children had much higher incidences rates but only during the preschool years, irrespective of FH. To prevent asthma among children with an FH of asthma or among Black infants, results suggest that interventions should be developed to target early life.
Objective Hearing loss rates in infants admitted to neonatal intensive care units (NICU) run at 2–15%, compared to 0.3% in full-term births. The etiology of this difference remains poorly understood. We examined whether the level of ambient sound and/or cumulative gentamicin (an aminoglycoside) exposure affect NICU hearing screening results, as either exposure can cause acquired, permanent hearing loss. We hypothesized that higher levels of ambient sound in the NICU, and/or gentamicin dosing, increase the risk of referral on the distortion product otoacoustic emission (DPOAE) assessments and/or automated auditory brainstem response (AABR) screens. Methods This was a prospective pilot outcomes study of 82 infants (<37 weeks gestational age) admitted to the NICU at Oregon Health & Science University. An ER-200D sound pressure level dosimeter was used to collect daily sound exposure in the NICU for each neonate. Gentamicin dosing was also calculated for each infant, including the total daily dose based on body mass (mg/kg/day), as well as the total number of treatment days. DPOAE and AABR assessments were conducted prior to discharge to evaluate hearing status. Exclusion criteria included congenital infections associated with hearing loss, and congenital craniofacial or otologic abnormalities. Results The mean level of ambient sound was 62.9 dBA (range 51.8–70.6 dBA), greatly exceeding American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommendation of <45.0 dBA. More than 80% of subjects received gentamicin treatment. The referral rate for (i) AABRs, (frequency range: ~1000–4000 Hz), was 5%; (ii) DPOAEs with a broad F2 frequency range (2063–10031 Hz) was 39%; (iii) DPOAEs with a low-frequency F2 range (<4172 Hz) was 29%, and (iv) DPOAEs with a high-frequency F2 range (>4172 Hz) was 44%. DPOAE referrals were significantly greater for infants receiving >2 days of gentamicin dosing compared to fewer doses (p= 0.004). The effect of sound exposure and gentamicin treatment on hearing could not be determined due to the low number of NICU infants without gentamicin exposure (for control comparisons). Conclusion All infants were exposed to higher levels of ambient sound that substantially exceed AAP guidelines. More referrals were generated by DPOAE assessments than with AABR screens, with significantly more DPOAE referrals with a high-frequency F2 range, consistent with sound- and/or gentamicin-induced cochlear dysfunction. Adding higher frequency DPOAE assessments to existing NICU hearing screening protocols could better identify at-risk infants to be referred for diagnostic evaluation.
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