COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE STRUCTURE OF URGENT HOSPITALIZATION OF CHILDREN DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Abstract

The analysis of the structure of emergency hospitalization cases in a multidisciplinary children’s hospital for children aged 0 to 17 years during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020, 2021, 2022) revealed significant differences compared to the period before (2019). During the pandemic children under the age of 3 most often needed emergency hospitalization due to acute respiratory pathology, which indicates a high vulnerability in susceptibility to infectious factors, despite restrictive measures. During pandemic , there was a decrease in cases of emergency hospitalization of children with acute digestive pathology in the age group under 3 years and in the group of children from 4 to 7 years of age from all cases of hospitalization per year, compared with the period before the pandemic. In the group of elder children, aged 8 years and older, on the contrary, an increase in the number of hospitalized with digestive diseases patients was revealed compared with the period before the pandemic. These features may be related to the restriction of nutrition of children of early and preschool age outside home, greater alertness of parents to children’s complaints and earlier seeking for medical help. In school-age children, a certain increase of acute pathology of the digestive organs is presumably due to the possessing chronic pathology, periods of exacerbation, influence of lower dietary control by adult members. The main causes of emergency hospitalization in the group of adolescents aged 12–17 years during the pandemic were associated with injuries and infectious diseases, which is probably due to children’s behavior and violation of self-isolation. In the period after the end of restrictions in the time of pandemic, an increase in the number of emergency hospitalizations in children with acute appendicitis was revealed, which may be the result of expanding children’s access to food in public catering establishments, and presumably by a consequence of the influence of a new coronavirus infection, which requires further study.