Change in Disease Dynamics and Health Care Utilisation in Children during COVID 19 in a Tertiary Care Hospital of Eastern India

  1. Bandya Sahoo
  2. S. Suneeti Kanyari
  3. Deepti Damayanty Pradhan
  4. Sibabratta Patnaik
  5. Manas Ranjan Behera

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Abstract

This retrospective, observational study was conducted by collecting data from medical records during COVID 19 pandemic from March 2020 till August 2020. This was compared with the data of 2019 during similar months. The impact of COVID 19 on use of preventive and curative paediatric health care service units like outpatient department, casualty, intensive care and immunization clinic were assessed. Data from 2019 to 2020 were compared using standard parametric and nonparametric tests. There was a significant decline in routine OPD (68%) attendance during the COVID 19 period as compared to pre-COVID period. Paediatric ward admissions and PICU admissions were decreased by 55% and 42% respectively. We also observed a significant 43% decline in the number of children attending immunization clinic in the year 2020. The fear of COVID 19 pandemic and the measures taken to control the pandemic has affected the health seeking behaviour of patients. This evaluation of trends in healthcare use may help in planning the delivery of healthcare service delivery in future.

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  1. Version published to 10.55489/njcm.1332022395
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.06.24.21259435: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsIRB: This retrospective, observational study was conducted in the department of Pediatrics of Kalinga institute of Medical Sciences, a tertiary care hospital after obtaining clearance from institutional ethics committee.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS for Windows, version 21.0.
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.06.24.21259435v1 on medRxiv