SHORT COMMUNICATION

Emergency Department Visits Related to Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Results From Nationwide Emergency Department Sample


Chaitanya Pant, yAbhishek Deshpande, zCamilla Fraga-Lovejoy, zJudith O’Connor,
Richard Gilroy, and
Mojtaba Olyaee

See ‘‘Overuse of the Emergency Department and CT Scans in Pediatric IBD: Time for Hot Spotting?’’ by Dotson and Kappelman on page 267.

report on children with IBD who presented to the emergency department (ED).

METHODS Data Source

ABSTRACT We analyzed a national US database to study the presentation of children with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) to the emergency department (ED). Our results indicate that from 2006 to 2010, there was a significant increase in the number of ED visits related to children with IBD accompanied by a contemporaneous decline in the rate of hospitalization that followed these ED visits. Earlier published results have highlighted an increased overall rate of hospitalizations in the United States related to children with IBD. In this context, our results support the evidence for an increased prevalence of pediatric IBD in the United States in recent years. Key Words: Crohn disease, emergency department, inflammatory bowel disease, Nationwide Emergency Department Sample, ulcerative colitis

(JPGN 2015;61: 282–284)

R

ecent US studies indicate a trend of increased hospitalizations related to pediatric inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) (1,2) resulting in a significant burden on health care resources (3,4). Although the epidemiology of pediatric IBD has been comparatively well studied in hospitalized patients, the data from other clinical settings remain limited. In this context, the use of outpatient health care resources is unknown. The aim of this study was to

Received November 19, 2014; accepted March 31, 2015. From the
Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Motility, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, the yMedicine Institute, Center for Value-Based Care Research, Cleveland, Ohio, and the zDivision of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition, Department of Pediatrics, Oklahoma University Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City. Address correspondence and reprint requests to Chaitanya Pant, MD, Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Motility, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, KS 66160 (e-mail: [email protected]). The authors report no conflicts of interest. Copyright # 2015 by European Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition and North American Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition DOI: 10.1097/MPG.0000000000000815

We analyzed the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project Nationwide Emergency Department Sample (NEDS), 2006–2010 using methods described earlier (5). This study did not require the approval of the institutional review board. Children from 5 to 19 years of age were included in the study; patients ages