Javaria Rasheed, Nabila Wakeel, Tooba Aleem, Muhammad Khalid, Fauzia Zafar.
Pattern and Outcome of Pediatric Admissions in a Tertiary Care Hospital Multan.
Pak Paed J Jan ;41(3):168-73.

Background: An insight into the pattern of hospital admission is cornerstone for healthcare planning and resource allocation. It also provides some measure of disease prevalence and severity. Objective: To determine the demographic profile, cause of hospitalization, duration of hospital stay and outcome of hospital admission at Pediatric Medical Unit of Nishtar Hospital, Multan. Material and Methods: A hospital based cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted at Pediatric Medical Unit of Nishtar Hospital, Multan from January 1, 2016 to December 31, 2016. Data on demographic features, mode of admission, referral source, cause of admission, duration of stay in hospital and outcome was extracted for all the admissions. We calculated percentage and frequency for categorical variable and mean with standard deviation (median and interquartile range where applicable) for continuous variables. Results: Total 3107 patients were admitted during study period. Males constituted 61.86% (n=1922) of admissions. Median age was 1 year (IQR – 4.67). Overall 74.5% of patients were below 5 years of age. Respiratory, neurologic &infectious illnesses were the main causes of admission. Mortality was 7.7% and most common cause of mortality was neurologic disorder (26.5%). Mean duration of stay was 4.5 ± 3.6 days. Sixty one percent cases were malnourished. Admissions peak was observed in November due to rise in respiratory illnesses. Conclusion: Majority of hospitalization is contributed by children less than 5 years of age. Malnutrition is an important associated factor of childhood hospitalization. The study also defines inpatient profile and gives us valuable intuition to map the reasons for pediatric hospital admissions in our locality.

PakMediNet -Pakistan's largest Database of Pakistani Medical Journals - http://www.pakmedinet.com