Children Hospitalized with Flu at Risk for Neurological Complications by Carla Kemp, Senior Editor

Children hospitalized with flu at risk for neurological complications by Carla Kemp, Senior Editor

● Antoon JW, et al. J Pediatr.https://bit.ly/3rHAOkl. Nearly 8% of children hospitalized with influenza during the 2015-'20 seasons had neurological complications, including febrile seizures and encephalopathy, a new study found.

Since the 2009 pandemic, concern has been growing over neurological complications in children with influenza. Recent studies looking at these complications, however, have had conflicting results and have been limited by small sample sizes.

The authors of this study aimed to determine the frequency of influenza-associated neurologic complications in hospitalized children as well as risk factors for and outcomes of complications.

To do so, they analyzed data on children ages 2 months through 17 years who were diagnosed with flu and admitted to one of 49 U.S. children's hospitals. They looked at whether the children had any of the following complications: encephalopathy, encephalitis, aseptic meningitis, febrile seizure, nonfebrile seizure, brain abscess and bacterial meningitis, Reye syndrome or cerebral infarction.

They also examined length of stay (LOS), intensive care unit (ICU) admission, death and hospital costs.

Of the 29,676 children hospitalized with influenza during the six seasons, 2,246 (7.6%) had neurologic complications. The most common were febrile seizures (1,477), encephalopathy (514) and nonfebrile seizures (364). Cerebral infarction and Reye syndrome were the rarest (16 and two, respectively).

Hospital LOS and ICU LOS were longer among children with neurologic complications than those without complications (2.5 vs 2.2 days) and (2.7 vs 2.2), respectively. Those with neurologic complications also had higher rates of ICU admissions (24.5% vs. 15.3%) and death (0.7% vs. 0.2%), and their hospital costs were greater ($6,013 vs. $5,282).

"Our findings emphasizing the strategic importance of influenza immunization and treatment in this high-risk population provide targets for immediate, actionable changes in clinical practice," the authors concluded.