Congratulations to Eleanor Sharp, MD, MS, for her recent publication in Hospital Pediatrics with her article “Frequency, Characteristics, and Outcomes of Patients Requiring Early PICU Readmission”. Also featured on this project from the Department was Catherine Forster, MD, MS, FAAP, who served as Sharp’s mentor on this project.
Readmission to the PICU is associated with worse outcomes, but factors associated remain unclear. The objective of this project was to identify factors that lead to early readmission to the PICU. To do so, Sharp and her team analyzed PICU admissions for patients aged 0 to 26 years in 48 tertiary care children’s hospitals between Janaury 1, 2016 and December 31, 2019. They defined early readmission as a return to the PICU within 2 calendar days of floor transfer during the same hospitalization.
The results of this study included 389,219 PICU admissions, of which the early readmissions rate was 2.5%. Factors with the highest odds of early PICU readmissions were parenteral nutrition and ventriculoperitoneal shunt. Factors with decreased odds of PICU readmission included extracorporeal membrane oxygenation and cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and patients with early readmissions had longer overall length of stay and increased odds of mortality.
Sharp and team found that while early PICU readmissions within the same hospitalization are uncommon, they are associated with significantly worse clinical outcomes and patients with medical complexities and technology dependence are especially vulnerable to these outcomes.
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